As David pressed a little harder, Mina's hand wrapped over his shoulder.
Easy.
"What can you do to help us?" she asked.
"Nothing. Can't. If Dark Ones know I helped..." Dante's gaze went a deeper shade of red as he focused it on David. "Death at his hands much better, no matter what kind of death."
"Why haven't you gone through a rift?"
"Can't fly. And won't let me. Have it so I can't leave. You have to say my real name to give me exit, the one my mother gave me. My mother tell me story and when I said I'd call myself Dante, she laughed. Not pretty sound," he reflected. "Gurgle, like death rattle." He frowned. "Maybe was."
Mina straightened. Gods, if I could destroy this place, every vestige of everything within it, I would. This place was never meant to be.
With the Dark Blood surging in his own veins, so that David felt the unnaturalness of it like a hammer pounding at him, he couldn't disagree. The very existence of such a place was the explanation of evil, random pockets of chaos, spawned by who knew what energy. Was it an emotional garbage dump for some world? A repository for human nightmares? A place to drain off excess aggression, and the Dark Ones had emerged from those pools like repulsive amphibian life-forms, shrieking their hatred and misery as their birth cry?
"Let him go." Mina's hand was on him again. "I'm tired of this."
But as they continued toward the tower, David noted Dante skulking, following after them through the thick branches of the tall, dark trees. He didn't like the vampire, the way he watched Mina, hunger and desperation muddled up with an elusive, malevolent undercurrent.
Brains were not Dante's strong suit, however, for in a few moments he bounded ahead and was waiting, though safely back in a tree, to address them again. "So you here to stay? Not to take Trumpet?"
She flicked him a dismissive glance without responding and continued on. David found the magical tether she had on him had changed to an exact five paces behind her, for when he fell one extra pace, trying to keep his eye on the elusive vampire, electrical energy surged through him, driving him to his knees with a gasp. Mina threw a glance at him. "Keep up, or it will get worse."
Weakness was viewed as opportunity in this world, so David wasn't surprised that Dante made another leap, this time at him. Despite the pain, David's hand was on his throat again, holding him at arm's length as Mina barely batted an eye.
"Can't kill me with your pet," Dante gasped.
"No. But he can crush your windpipe, and that would make you far less irritating to me." Mina stared him down. "But do stay close, Dante. I may have a use for you."
David released him once more, tossing him about twenty feet away. After rolling to an ignominious halt in a puddle of mud, Dante made a show of dusting himself off and stared defiantly at her down that oddly aquiline, aristocratic nose. "I may not wish to be used."
"You will if it suits your purpose. If I ask, it will."
She proceeded onward, regal as a queen. In the prison of his body, David had to marvel over it, the way she walked over the tiled, frozen and fiery earth with the demeanor of royalty, David as her enslaved angelic bodyguard. There was no hint of the careful, furtive way he'd seen her move across the ocean floor, or her hesitation with each new experience he'd presented to her.
But then, she'd told him, hadn't she? The voices had been in her head all her life, telling her this was where she belonged. She'd told him how to control the blood, use it as a weapon, because she knew how to do it herself.
Mina?
There was no answer. Pushing aside the uneasiness, he told himself her attention was likely on what lay ahead of them, drawing closer every moment.
The tower had no doors. Only openings all the way up, jagged ones. It reminded him of a dead tree, petrified into stone after woodpeckers had gnawed deep holes into its sides. As he watched, Dark Ones began to emerge from those holes, as she predicted, and wing their way across the sky toward them. Taking an attack formation.
David glanced back to see that Dante had disappeared. The Dark Ones' scavenger and spy, but only barely tolerated by them, he'd warrant. He might still prove useful. The traitorous bastard.
As David drew two of his daggers, Mina at last looked toward him. Even with the illusion gone from her, both her eyes were blood red. "You should drop those."
"Your spell gives me the mandate of protecting you. They're not going to touch you, if I can prevent it. Protect yourself however you need to do it."
"All right," she said. And blasted him with a current so strong it somersaulted him backward.
David hit the ground hard, just as she lifted her arm and a sizzling green and purple dome of energy crackled around them, causing the Dark Ones to sheer upward, then turn, shrieking and snarling. She responded in the same language, shrieking and keening in that shrill voice.
After a few dizzying moments, he was able to sit up, shake himself and retrieve his daggers. She let him move back to her, close enough to protect. If she'd let him. In the meantime, she'd snarled, hissed and apparently threatened her way to a satisfying conclusion in their peculiar communication form. The Dark Ones now adjusted their flight formation, giving more of an impression of an advance guard preceding her toward the tower. But they were hovering, staring at him. Waiting.
As she turned and looked at him, the command exploded in his head, like shrapnel striking nerve centers, driving him to his knees.
Strip. All of it. Leave it all.
He fought her, fought himself, and yet couldn't stop his fingers from unbuckling the harness, letting it drop. Unbuckling the belt on the tunic, unwrapping it, dropping it so he was entirely naked. Weaponless. She had complete, ruthless control of him.
His father, with a gun. Ordering him to strip. Mina, doing the same. He fought to keep it separate in his mind.
I will use it against you...
But then on top of that, he couldn't rise, was kept on his hands and knees from the force of her spell. The Dark Ones shrieked in startled amazement, swooped in, but couldn't come inside that dome of energy. They grazed it, risking the crackle of electric energy along their eager talons, the singeing of their wings.
Some had landed, and while he'd been distracted by the ones in the air, there were Dark Ones on foot who'd also come out to meet them. Gathering around, closing in, their presence making his head pound, even with the Dark One blood.
Crawl, angel.
As she issued the mental command, she turned and began to walk toward the tower. David felt the fire searing his skin, the ice freezing it. The purple and green energy faded away, leaving him facing a nightmare come to life.
He hadn't permitted himself to feel fear, made himself view everything up to this
point as steps to prepare for battle. Now he would face it weaponless, to honor the Legion, the Lady and himself. And most importantly, to protect Mina. This was how he would serve her best.
The Dark Ones closed in on him, their shrieks filling his ears, rupturing them as talons and teeth began to tear at his wings.
Twenty-three
MINA didn't look back, just kept walking. A tile of ice, a tile of fire, the stench of sulfur, Dark One decay and waste. The wriggling, grotesque life-forms they fed upon.
This life was the part of her she couldn't deny. The part she likely understood better than the human, merperson or seawitch.
When she'd been locked in chains against the Abyss wall, there were times, at the very first, when the pain and horror of it had been so overwhelming that she'd broken and screamed. Screamed until she had no voice. Pulled against the chains, both the magical and physical, until her blood attracted even more predators. Then, after a while, there was no sense of the passage of time. There was just now. Getting through the next minute. No past, no future, just an existence to which her body kept clinging for whatever reason, when anything seemed better than this.
But knowing all that, remembering it, she knew this was worse. What was about to happen was too horrid to contemplate, to handle, so she simply shut down. She knew she was evil now, because even if it was the only way the Trumpet could be recovered, no one with a scrap of good inside their souls would have come up with this idea. There were some things that the universe should be sacrificed to preserve.
Perhaps it was a blessing they weren't going to survive. He might call it love now, but what would it be after this?
She didn't let her steps falter when they wrenched the first scream from him. Drawing on the Dark One blood within her fiercely, just as she'd told him to do, she immersed herself in it. She could go so deep her conscience would drown. She'd feel the same thrill as they did when he cried out. That deep, she might forget why they were here, but it was unbearably tempting. She couldn't do this if she felt his agony as well as heard it, knowing she was trading his torment and life for this.
I will love you no matter what.