“There’s no point in going if we wind up stuck in the same situation we just had to scramble to run from,” Paige said.
“Yeah there is,” Lola said. “Staying? We definitely die. Go, there’s a chance. Slim, but still a chance.”
Rose clenched her teeth. If they couldn’t help, couldn’t they just shut up and let her think?
“Boy,” Green Eyes said.
Noah startled a bit as Green Eyes drew closer.
Prey and predator.
“Rose, who’s making that offer? I want her to die more than anyone, and she’s smart enough to know it,” Green Eyes said.
“Uh huh?” Noah looked between Green Eyes and Rose.
“Yeah,” Green Eyes said. “She’s right. She’s everything I’m not. If I could erase anyone, no consequences, I’d erase her.”
Noah was looking at Rose as Green Eyes said it. He didn’t see Rose flinch or change her expression in the slightest.
Rose offered him a nod for good measure. He looked away, as if bothered.
“Dunno what you’d call it, but I’m vouching for her. I know what you’re in for if you say no and we win. She’s telling the truth there. It’s a good deal. One I’d take.”
“Character reference,” Peter chipped in.
In the sense that we sometimes want to look at a one star review for a popular product to see what the worst critics have to say.
“Yeah, that,” Green Eyes said. “Don’t always know the right words.”
“Why do you want her dead?” Noah asked.
“‘Cause that spirit she talked about, that’s tearing her up inside, like your spirits’re eating you up? He’s my hero. Not my boyfriend, exactly. But someone important. I’m worried about him, and stopping her is the best and fastest way to stop worrying.”
There were a few surprised glances from members of Rose’s group that hadn’t gotten the memo yet on that particular conflict.
“Okay,” Noah said, and the word had a tone.
Rose didn’t move. She needed more. Something told her that if she pushed, leaped to shake his hand right now, he’d run.
“Okay,” the boy said. “It’s… better than nothing. I believe you. If my friends are okay with it-”
“If you’re okay with it, then go,” Rose said, stern. “We don’t have time to talk.”
He looked at his brother and friends for confirmation. They nodded.
He pointed, and this time, he was inviting everyone else to follow.
They’d had time to rest and recover, but not to mend. Rose’s legs were stiff from far too much activity in one night. Scratches and bruises from her stint in the Abyss were making themselves felt, and having stopped, the sweat that clung to her body had chilled.
They didn’t head for a stairwell or elevator, but for one side of the floor, where flooring had given way, a hole.
Dropping down to the floor beneath.
Green Eyes and the vestiges were the first ones down. Rose’s group followed.
Evan was the last to come, leaving a line of fire behind him.
Further down, the floor was more damaged. They improvised a route, dropping down another floor.
“No stairs?” Peter gasped.
“Blocked, trapped!” Mia said.
Which might be a factor in why there was so little furniture.
Another floor down, and Rose could see from the view out the window that they were close to the ground floor.
“Trouble,” Lola said. “Just below us.”
“Keep going!” Noah said. “There’s always trouble here!”
Rose redoubled her efforts, even as her legs felt like lead.
They dropped down once more, this tie through a shattered section of bathroom. In making downward progress, they’d moved at a diagonal through the building. From the northwest corner to the southeast, roughly, if cardinal directions had any sense or logic in this place.
Where other floors had been emptied, furniture and even walls torn away to barricade or block conventional entry, the ground floor was littered with debris, including but not being limited to a car that had been dragged into the interior, set beside the front desk.
Among that debris and detritus was a lurking wretch of the Barber, waiting for them, a broken thing, a half that had been given little except the ability to feel pain. It had been beaten, left a shell of it’s former self. A fat lump of a man.
She looked, almost automatically, for the other half. She found it. A female half, muscle and ugliness, face contorted with rage, a makeshift spear in one hand.
Not the threat that Lola had warned about.
The double doors at the front of the building shattered.
The demon hound. The lawyer wasn’t far behind, holding the leash that connected to the hound’s great metal collar
The demon beast shrugged its way free of the double doors. Paige was ready, holding her orb of light up high, hands cupped around it.
The light flashed, and it very nearly blinded Rose, even though her line of sight was blocked by the backs of Paige’s hands. Ainsley grabbed her, helping to pull her forward, and she followed the rest of the group to the very corner of the building.
A passage, lined with wires on one side. Not even an access hatch, it was more of a space cut for the wires, which just so happened to be large enough for the spirit-infused kids to crawl through.
Very possibly too small for them. For her group.
Peter was the next one in, and it wasn’t an easy fit. He went in head first, and he stopped at the chest.
Rose turned to look, and she saw the demon hound shaking its head.
Paige was saying something. A quick prayer.
Not directing her focus at the hellhound, but at the lawyer.
The light flared again. What looked to be invisible figures wreathed in glowing drapery emerged from the reflections and refractions. They reached out and gripped the lawyer. Not firm holds, but gentle ones, enough to mire him.
Karmic burdens? Rose wondered. It would fit the Sphinx’s specialty, as would the protective end of things.
A hand covered his mouth, while another covered his eyes. He fought and twisted to get away. The hound strained, but though it was massive and strong, and even though the chain went taut, it didn’t pull free of the lawyer’s hand.
The hell-beast lunged, harder, and a stray, blind swipe of its claw destroyed part of the front desk. It still didn’t pull free.
Behind it, Rose saw, the lawyer’s expression changed. His body rippled with dark smoke, and that smoke served to shrug off the specters.
“Rose!” Ainsley called. She was already in the vent. Rose and Paige were the last ones.
Rose climbed through, and she was thankful of all the days where she’d simply forgotten to eat. Had she been one half-inch thicker around the chest or hips, she might not have fit.
Her cousin was so close behind her that the girl’s face collided at one point with the bottom of Rose’s boot.
The hellhound could be heard behind them, gnashing.
It’ll pursue us aboveground, Rose thought.
The path led to a basement area, and the group collected there, in almost pitch darkness, before Paige produced another light. Maggie’s goblins were the first thing that Rose saw. The vestiges were the next.
An omen, perhaps, that there was nothing pretty waiting for them ahead.
Noah led the way across the basement, to a hole in the wall.