Thankful that somewhere along the way he’d lost his glasses, Dean ignored the voices because Claire had asked him to. She’d even said, “please.”
He blinked, hit by a sudden realization. The voice he’d heard yesterday in the hall had been the voice of the pit.
BINGO.
And he’d listened. He’d hesitated.
OH, FOR…SIX SECONDS OUT OF TWENTY SQUEAKY CLEAN YEARS!
He deserved to go to Hell.
YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?
Except he didn’t want to die.
Over, or maybe under, the voices in his head, he could hear the drone of words chanted in a language he didn’t understand. Slowly, working within the invisible bands that held him, he turned until he could see along his left arm. Gazing past his clenched fist, out over the edge of the pentagram, he could see Diana Hansen. She was just a kid, he realized, she’d never have believed that she’d set this whole mess in motion. If by some miracle he got out of this, he was after kicking her right in the butt.
Her back against the wall, barely daring to breathe, Claire crept the last few feet to her sister’s side. Once she took Diana’s hand, she’d control both their power.
Dean’s eyes widened as Claire slid into his field of vision.
Rescue!
Claire saw the word in Dean’s eyes and flinched.
Dean saw her flinch.
Sara chanted louder, spitting out consonants. The pentagram began to glow.
Maybe because he was suspended over a hole to Hell. Maybe because he’d been breathing the fumes of his own evaporating blood. Maybe because he’d spent almost a year next to a metaphysical accident site.
Maybe just because he could read it on Claire’s face.
Dean knew.
She couldn’t save him and the world.
He’d hesitated.
He was being given a chance to make up for that.
Hell could have him, but it couldn’t have the world.
Do it, he told Claire silently.
Claire shook her head. There had to be another way.
The pentagram began to dissolve.
It was almost worth it to know she was willing to risk the world for him.
Do it.
Because she had no other choice, she did.
Claire grabbed Diana’s hand and opened the conduit Quickly retracing the pentagram, she etched her own name into the pattern.
Sara turned.
Dean fell.
Claire hit the other Keeper with everything both she and Diana had.
Suddenly finding herself in a sphere of blinding white light, Sara flung up a bloodstained hand to cover her eyes. Lips too red parted…
…and she laughed.
Designed to prevent any sort of metaphysical power from waking a Keeper bent on cataclysmic evil, the shield Sara had worn for more than fifty years held.
Stepping down to the floor, Sara straightened her jacket and nodded toward Diana. “I thought our friend here too young for this site. Not,” she added after a critical inspection of Claire, “that you’re so much older.” Her smile was frankly patronizing. “You killed him for nothing, you know. Power can’t pass into this shield.”
Claire dragged Diana aside as a bolt of red light blew chunks of rock out of the wall.
Sara’s smile broadened. “How nice for me that it passes out of it just fine.”
Teeth clenched against rising nausea, Claire stepped forward, but before she could speak, Sara raised her hand again.
“Oh, yes, you can enter the shield physically, pummel me if you like, but don’t expect me to stand here and allow…”
Which was when Baby launched himself from the top of the stairs.
Sara had time to scream as she fell back but only just.
Clinging to each other for support, Claire and Diana walked to the edge of the pentagram and cautiously leaned forward.
GOT HER!
OW! BE CAREFUL, SHE KICKS!
Claire felt her power fill the pentagram, holding Hell off from the world. That was it, then. A lifetime in the Elysian Fields Guest House.
Diana swallowed and found her voice. “Poor Ba…”
THAT’S OUR PUPPY! IS HE GLAD HE’S HOME?
WHO’S A GOOD DOGGIE-WOGGIE, THEN? WHO’S A GOOD BOY!
“Doggie-woggie?” Claire repeated.
Before Hell could answer, Diana dug her nails into Claire’s arm. “Look! She’s still part of the pattern. If you tie the pentagram to her before it fades, she’ll pull the hole in after her!”
Still buzzing from the power she’d passed, it took Claire a heartbeat to understand. “I can close the site?”
“Yes!”
“Forever?”
“Yes!”
Sara’s name had begun to fray. “No.”
“Are you out of your mind? This may be your only chance!”
“No!” Claire yanked her arm free. “Dean’s in there and I’m not closing that hole until he finds his way out.” When Diana began another protest, she cut her off. “Hell can’t hold a willing sacrifice. They have to let him go.”
“They do?”
“If you paid more attention to what was going on and less to what you just happen to be powerful enough to do…” She bit it off. Now was not the time. “Yes. They do.”
“Okay, fine, but they’re not going to help him find his way or give him a boost out, and Sara’s name is already fading! You haven’t got time to wait. Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain.”
Claire reached for more power and poured it into the pentagram. From where she was standing, it was a long reach to the middle of the possibilities. Her vision was starting to blur, and she wasn’t entirely certain she could feel her toes. “I can hold it,” she snarled through clenched teeth. “I can hold it for as long as it takes.”
“All right.” Diana shrugged out of her jean jacket. “Then I’m going in after him.”
“Oh, no, you’re not!” Claire had a strong suspicion she sounded like their mother. At the moment, she didn’t much care. “This isn’t like going across the border for cheap electronics! You want to help, reactivate the conduit and start feeding me…” The “S” tried to straighten out. She forced it back into a curve. “…power.”
“That’d make me part of the seal and we could be stuck here together indefinitely. You want him out, someone has to go and get him.”
“Not you!” A subliminal growl snapped the second “a” back into line. “You’d never survive.”
“But Dean…”
“Dean has the strength of ten because his heart is pure.” Which was when Claire drew a second conclusion from Sara’s choice of sacrifice. Fortunately for Diana, she had other things to deal with at the moment. “The rules protect him.”
“What rules?”
“I know this is hard to believe at seventeen, but there are always rules.” She definitely couldn’t feel her toes and was starting to have doubts about her entire left foot. “It takes extraordinary conditions for the living to pass over and then come…The living!” Eyes locked on the pentagram, Claire grabbed her sister’s arm. “Find Jacques!”
“Jacques’ gone. She blew him into ectoplasmic particles.”
“Then gather him!”
“Me?”
“You’re always complaining how no one ever lets you do anything. Just be careful where you’re pulling power from this close to the pit.”
“You had to ruin it with advice,” Diana complained as she started to spin. “Couldn’t just assume I’d do it right.”
All things considered, Claire felt she had precedent for that assumption, but she let it go as the wind began to swirl around the furnace room. A moment later, a stream of tiny lights poured down from the basement.
“There’s two missing,” Diana panted as the lights refused to coalesce. “I don’t know where they are.”
Vaguely Jacques-shaped, the lights dove into the pit.