She turned the chains and padlocks to rice and then kicked piles of it out of the way as she dragged open the furnace room door.
“Claire!” Suspended over the pit, Jacques flickered like a bulb about to go out. “Help me!”
Skidding to a halt at the edge of the pentagram, Claire hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do. Because of the seal, Jacques hadn’t gone directly to Hell, but there was sufficient power in the area directly over the pit to shred his ties to the physical world. When the last strand ripped free, his soul would be absorbed, seal or no seal.
“Claaaaaaaaire!”
She could barely hear her name in the panicked wail. Making it up as she went along, she reached out with her will.
HE WAS GIVEN TO US!
“It doesn’t work that way.” Slowly, she wrapped possibilities around the thrashing, flickering ghost. “You know the rules.”
RULES DO NOT APPLY TO US.
“You wish. Souls come to you by their own actions. They can’t be given to you.”
BUT HE’S DEAD.
“So?” It was like scooping a flopping fish out of a tidal pool with a net made of wet toilet paper.
WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE HIS ACTIONS.
“Not on this side you don’t.”
WE’RE HELPING HIM PASS OVER.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Holding him as securely as possible, Claire began to pull Jacques toward the edge of the pit. His struggles made it difficult to tell how quickly he was moving, but after a few tense moments he was definitely closer to the side than the middle.
When eldritch power crawled like a bloated fly over the part of her will extending over the edge of the pentagram, she realized Hell was analyzing the rescue attempt. She felt it remove its attention from Jacques and gather its resources. There was barely time to brace herself before an energy spike thrust up out of the depths, dragging both her will and Jacques back toward the center of the pit.
LET HIM GO. HE IS NOTHING TO YOU.
“That’s not what your recent temptation implied.”
WE’RE BIG ENOUGH TO ADMIT WHEN WE’RE WRONG.
Sock feet slid closer to the edge of the pentagram.
ON SECOND THOUGHT, DON’T LET HIM GO.
If she let him go, the odds were good she wouldn’t fasten onto him again before Hell tore through the bonds holding him to the world. If she didn’t let him go, she’d be dragged through the pentagram and his fate would be a minor footnote to the cataclysm as the seal broke. Her toes dug through her socks and into the imperfection in the rock floor, but that only slowed her.
Jacques or the world?
It was the sort of dilemma Hell delighted in. Claire could feel its pleasure in the certain knowledge that she’d have to sacrifice Jacques for the lives of millions.
Then strong arms wrapped around her from behind. Her toes stopped millimeters from disaster.
“Bring him in,” Dean told her, tightening his grip one arm at a time. “And let’s get out of here.”
Constrained by the pentagram, Hell stood no chance against the deeply ridged treads on a pair of winter work boots designed to get the wearer up and down the chutes of St. Johns.
Weight on his heels, Dean stepped back, once, twice, dragging Claire back with him, dragging Jacques with her. At the outside edge of the pentagram, the tension snapped and flung all three of them against the far wall of the furnace room; first Dean, then Claire, then Jacques, who slapped through them both like a cold fog to smash in turn against the rock.
Teeth gritted, Claire pried herself up off of Dean, used the wall to pull herself to her feet, and attempted to blink away the afterimages caused by impact with limestone closely followed by Jacques’ left knee passing between her eyes. “Is everyone all right?”
“I guess.” Dean braced himself against the floor, separated himself from Jacques’ right arm and shoulder, and stood.
“Jacques?”
“Non. I am not all right. Where are we?”
“The furnace room,” Dean answered, before Claire had a chance.
“What? In the hotel?” The last syllable rose to a shriek.
“Yeah. The furnace room in the hotel.” Dean shot a look both wounded and disapproving at Claire. “But I don’t think we should stay.”
Jacques glanced wide-eyed toward the pentagram. “It is real?”
“It is,” Claire told him, holding her head in both hands. When they’d broken free, her will had retracted and she had the kind of headache that came with trying to fit approximately twelve feet of power in an eight-inch skull.
“Then we talk in the dining room.” Still flickering around the edges, he disappeared.
“The dining room,” Claire repeated. “Good plan.” Staggering slightly, she started up the stairs.
One hand out to catch her if she fell, Dean followed, still far, far too angry to give in to the faint gibbering he could hear coming from inner bits of his brain. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a hole to Hell in the furnace room?”
“I’m a Keeper, it’s my duty to protect you.”
“From what?”
“Living in terror.”
A LIE. A VERITABLE FALSEHOOD!
Claire sighed. She couldn’t believe a headache could pack so much mass; it felt as though she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. “From having to bear more than I thought you could.”
“Didn’t think much of me, did you? Do you?”
Heaving herself up another step, she waved more or less toward the pit. “Dean, it’s Hell!”
“We’ve a saying back home…”
“Please, spare me.”
“…some don’t be afraid of the sea, they goes down to the sea, and they be drowned. But I be afraid of the sea, and I goes down to the sea, and I only be drowned now and then.”
“What the h…”
SAY IT.
“…heck does that mean?” she snarled.
“Fear can keep you alive. You should’ve told me.”
KEEPERS, ALWAYS THINK THEY KNOW WHAT’S…
Claire slammed the door shut on the last word, spraying uncooked rice all over the basement.
A single grain of those pushed inside the furnace room flew down the stairs and tumbled end over end across the stone floor. It stopped no more than its own width away from the outermost edge of the glyphs that sealed the pentagram.
DAMN.
“Look, Dean, you knew what you needed to know.” Claire kicked at a mound of rice, guilt making her sound petulant even to her own ears. “I told you there was a major accident site down here; I just didn’t name it.”
His back against the furnace room door, Dean stared at her, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You didn’t name it? It’s not like you forgot to tell me it was called Fred or George or Harold. It’s Hell!”
“Technically, it’s energy from the lower end of the possibilities manifesting itself in a format the person who called it up could understand.”
“And that format?”
“Is Hell; all right?” Sagging back against the washing machine, she threw up her hands. “You win.”
Dean jerked a hand back through his hair. “It’s not about winning.” He paused, trying to figure out what it was he’d won. “Okay. Maybe it is. You’re admitting you should have told me, right?”
“Right.”
“That you were wrong?”
She found enough energy to lift her head. “Don’t push it.” One fingernail traced the maker’s name stamped into the front of the washer. “So now you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to leave?”
“Leave?” Leave. He hadn’t actually thought it through that far.
“What’s the point?” his common sense wanted to know. “There’s nothing there that hasn’t been there for the last year.”
“Shouldn’t you be telling me to pack?”
“Too late.”
“Dean?”
He took a step away from the furnace room. He wanted to ask her if she really thought she could close up Hell, but the sound of a hundred grains of rice being ground to powder drew his gaze to the floor. “What’s with all the rice?”