Yeah, yeah. I had all that down. I wanted the book to tell me something I didn’t know.
The words pulsed in my mind like a heartbeat. I’d survived all three tests: the Morfran attack, the battle in the pub, the race through the slate mine. Maybe the book was taunting me because I’d passed them, reminding me that I’d proved myself worthy of becoming the last thing I ever wanted to be.
Lucky me.
I looked up to see Kane coming back down the aisle, then returned to the book. I called to mind the new prophecy Mab told me about that morning: As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his. Maybe focusing on that would force the book to reveal more.
But I never got the chance, because the plane dropped.
Kane, along with the entire bathroom line, flew upward and smacked the ceiling, then came down and hit the floor hard. Ms. Iron Hair slammed into the seat in front of her, somersaulting halfway over it. Screams erupted. The overhead bins popped open. A blizzard of papers flew everywhere and iPods, laptops, briefcases, and dozens of other items tumbled through the cabin like clothes in a dryer.
For too many heart-stopping seconds, the plane fell. Then it leveled off.
The Book of Utter Darkness was still on my tray. I’d slapped my hand on it when the plane dropped. I stuffed the book into the seat pocket and started to close the tray.
The FASTEN SEATBELT sign flicked on, as sobs and groans filled the cabin. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said a shaky female voice over the PA system, “the captain has turned on the FASTEN SEATBELT sign. Please return to your seats and—”
Before anyone could move, it happened again. People who’d been trying to stand were tossed back into the air. Kane landed half on me, half in his seat, snapping my tray from its brackets. I helped him into his seat and scrambled to get the seatbelt around him. But what good does a seatbelt do when you’re dropping like a stone out of the sky? How far can a plane going 500 miles an hour fall in ten seconds? The math was beyond me, and I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer.
Once again, the plane leveled off. This time, the screaming didn’t stop.
“Are you okay?” I asked Kane.
“I think I broke my shoulder blade,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” His superfast werewolf healing would take care of a broken bone, but even Kane couldn’t recover from a plane crash.
On my other side, Ms. Iron Hair clutched my arm, crying.
The plane nosed upward. The pilot was trying to regain some height.
The PA system bonged. People shushed each other so they could hear the message. Other than the thrumming engines and a couple of hysterical screamers, the plane was quiet. “This is your captain speaking. Please remain calm. It seems we have a glitch in the aircraft’s stabilization system.”
Glitch. As soon as he said the word, I felt a tug, and everything went gray. Demonic laughter rang out; something had grabbed my perception and yanked it into the demon plane. I whipped my head around to see if Difethwr shadowed me. As I turned, a movement outside the window caught my eye.
Pryce, in his demon form, his massive wings expanded, flew beside the plane. He held up three taloned fingers.
Third, Victory falls.
The plane dropped again.
Oh, God, no.
This was the third test. Not “Victory falls in battle” but “Victory falls from the sky.” How the hell was I supposed to keep a jumbo jet in the air?
I braced against the seat in front of me as the plane fell. Pryce had loosed a Glitch and escaped into the demon plane. The Glitch was frying the system that kept the plane in the air. And there was nothing below us except thirty thousand feet of empty space and the Atlantic Ocean.
33
I HAD NOTHING WITH ME TO FIGHT A GLITCH. NO BRONZE weapons, no Glitch Gone. Nothing. And the plane was bucking and swooping like an out-of-control roller coaster.
Ms. Iron Hair half-tore my arm out of its socket. I pulled away, but she grabbed me again. Mascara smeared her face in two black streaks, but not a single hair was out of place.
That stiff hair—I had an idea. “Do you have any hairspray with you?”
She actually reached up a hand to check her hairstyle.
“No, for me. I need hairspray.” It sprayed, it was sticky. It might work like Glitch Gone. Or it might not. But it was the only idea I had. “It could fix the plane.”
She looked at me the way people look at a scary-crazy seatmate, but just then the plane dropped with another stomach-lurching jolt. “My purse! It’s in my purse.” She scrabbled around under the seat in front of her. “Oh, no! It spilled.”
Pens and lipsticks rolled around our feet, along with gum, a cell phone, a makeup compact, keys—no hairspray. I bent over to get another look and whacked heads with her. I couldn’t see the hairspray anywhere.
“What are you looking for?” Kane asked.
“Hairspray. I think I can use it to draw the Glitch out of the instrument panel.”
He went up the aisle on his hands and knees, peering under seats. A woman screamed when he lunged toward her. “Got it!”
He tossed the bottle back to me. I grabbed it from the air and shoved it into the front pocket of my jeans. Then I unclipped my seatbelt and started up the aisle.
It was like trying to walk with one foot on each side of the fault line during an earthquake. Kane had the right idea; I dropped to all fours. I met him a few feet up the aisle. “Vicky,” he said, looking into my eyes. “If you can’t—”
“No. No good-byes. I’ll stop it.” I wasn’t sure how, armed with nothing more than three ounces of hairspray, but I was not going to let Pryce kill all these people. I brushed my lips against Kane’s and crawled past him.
It was rough going. The plane would dive, and I’d slide or tumble or somersault forward, banging into seats, legs, junk that had fallen into the aisle. Then it’d rock violently the other way, making moving forward like climbing a cliff. I grabbed the seat legs and pulled myself forward with my arms.
Somehow, I made it to the front of the plane. A flight attendant was strapped into a seat by the cockpit door. She clutched the sides of her head; panic contorted her features.
“Get me into the cockpit,” I said.
“You can’t go in there. Federal regulations prohibit—” The plane lurched, and her scream cut off her words. I slid forward, whacking my head on the cockpit door with a bang. I started banging with my fists, too. “Let me in! I can stop the Glitch!”
The door remained closed.
“Stop it,” the flight attendant hissed. “They’re trying to keep this plane in the air.”
“So am I.” I climbed to my knees. I closed my eyes and thought of strength—eight-hundred-pound gorillas, elephants, the Incredible Hulk. Not enough concentration to shift, but enough to bulk up my arm. Strength surged into me. I made a fist and hit the door, right above the lock. The door buckled. I drew back and hit it again, and then once more. The lock gave way. I yanked the door open.
Two pilots sat at an instrument panel that shot sparks like Fourth of July fireworks. The pilot on the left wrestled with the controls. The one on the right aimed a gun at me. Or tried to—the way the plane jumped around, it was impossible to keep steady. “Get out!” he yelled.
“I can help!” I yelled back, grabbing the door frame to keep from sliding away as the plane bucked upward. “A Glitch is a demon. I kill demons!”
His eyes narrowed, and I thought he was going to shoot. I got ready to duck in case by some fluke he got lucky. Instead, he lowered the gun. “It’s a … demon?”