The black fog writhed and battered them as they came closer, revealing the same glowing red eyes as the flying wraiths they’d met in London. Leaping over the fencelike pile of stones, still astride the horses, they guided them into the midst of the nasty black clouds.
As soon as they broke the invisible wall of the graveyard, the shadows began to surge toward them. Swords flashing, Brim and Michalas remained close on their heels as Max and Victoria sliced and swung at the sweeping, lunging demons.
She found herself clinging to the horse with only her knees, guiding it deeper into the swirling fog as she protected herself with the sword while holding the orb, ready at any moment to pull it from her pocket and lift it into the moonlight.
Without speaking, Victoria and Max moved in tandem, urging their reluctant horses toward the little building, where the roiling fog concentrated. She watched the sky, ducking red-eyed shadows while looking for the moon, aware of Max’s powerful blade slicing and slashing near her.
As they drew nearer the building, the darkness became more complete, the buffeting force of their attackers stronger, colder, more paralyzing. Victoria felt claws scrape over her shoulders, grab at her hair, and set her horse to squealing and stumbling beneath her. In fact, her mount was panicked and stamped desperately, trying to get away, tipping and tilting her off balance as she was badgered from above.
Her sword cut through the neck of a flying demon, and as it puffed into little whorls of black smoke, she whirled to stop another one from latching its claws on to Max’s shoulders. The battle became a mess of stamping hooves, the cry of gale-force winds in her ears, the scrape of claws and the rank smell of demons and death ash.
“Victoria!”
She swung her sword up in an arc as she heard her name on the wind, nearly lost in the maelstrom, and looked toward Max. He moved slick and smooth, ducking and dodging, arcing and slashing through a new surge of demons, but she saw what he meant for her to see.
A slender beam of moon shone on the black ground.
At that moment, a shadow swooped close. Her horse gave a sudden, frightened twist, and she lost her balance, tumbling off, managing to keep her sword in one hand and the orb in the other. She crashed onto a gravestone, landing on her side, and it knocked the breath out of her for a moment.
Talons shrieked down onto her, scoring her side,
then her back as she rolled off the marker and onto the ground. She gasped for air, fighting the blazing pain in her side as she struggled to stand. The orb still in her hands, fingers closed tightly around it-she’d die before she released it-she staggered against a hip-high stone and shoved herself to her feet on shaky knees.
Something slammed into the side of her head, and she nearly fell again, and then another round of claws and nails, and even a thrashing beak, diving, shooting toward her. Pulling the orb from her pocket, she half crawled, half stumbled toward the shining light, the miracle she’d asked for.
She was damned if she’d waste it.
A loud roar in her ears, and a rearing black shadow came upon her, and at first she ducked… but then in the fog, she realized it was Max, pushing his way closer to beat off the hordes of demons as they descended madly. Tucking the orb close to her belly, Victoria slung her sword blade up and then felt the shimmer of liquid in the air, spraying gently over her.
At first she thought it was blood, but then when the blackness seemed to rear back, take a breath, she realized it was holy water.
Max, Brim, and Michalas had formed a circle around her and their swords gleamed and clashed, sometimes even against one another as they battled the wraiths back. Victoria pulled the orb away from the safety of her body and stepped toward the moonbeam, shoving the orb into the glimmer of light as another wave of holy water-this time from Brim-set the demons back, gasping.
The light caught at the bluish orb, and suddenly a cast of blue glowed over her hand and arm, up around and shooting from the sphere. A shriek filled the air, streaking into her head, high and loud and long. She dropped her sword, nearly dropped the orb, as she tried to cover her ears, shaking her head to clear them.
The shriek went on, high and shrill, and she staggered, felt the same responses from her companions as their horses stamped and bucked and reared, hooves slamming down, trying to scatter through the gravestones as they were held in place.
The moonbeam. In an ellipse on the ground, there was a circle of pure light in the brown and crusty grass.
She focused on that, tried to ignore the debilitating scream as the orb captured the moonbeam. She saw that the light shone from the sphere in many directions, and, ready to scream herself in desperation, Victoria moved, trying to aim one of the bolts of blue light toward the narrow crevice of the portal.
The screams roared louder, higher, the wraiths came faster and harder, and the swords above slashed slower and more awkwardly. Someone fell next to her, and the slamming and clattering of hooves against stone and dirt told her that their horses had escaped.
But the black fog began to swirl, tighter and tighter, coiling, and screaming, and she saw… Oh, yes! It was being dragged back into the crevice, the red eyes of the wraiths wide and burning, then narrowing as they fought the draw, the pull down back into the depths.
She held the orb, watching that the light never wavered from the crevice, even as another swipe of claws set her to nearly stumbling… She saw smoke curling up, and suddenly, the red eyes were set in humanlike faces as they swirled and whirled into a powerful vortex back into the crevice.
The shrieks lessened, the black fog thinned, dragged below, and she still didn’t move, watching the orb send them all to Hell, even though her hand shook and her back screamed with its own pain. This went on and on, and she realized that the demons were not only coming from the whirling smoke around them, but from all over… for the sky streaked with dark roiling fog and clouds, even as the moon became more and more exposed… burning brighter and stronger through dark gray clouds tinged with white.
Suddenly, in front of her stood the man with empty eyes and the curly-brimmed hat. Adolphus. His eyes were burning, his teeth long and yellow and sharp, and he was lunging toward her, black and dark and evil… The smell of malevolence filled her nostrils as the careening shriek swelled in her ears, reverberating painfully through her body. And then he shriveled and wrinkled, his face melting into a long, drawn-out image, swirling down into the ground as his lips moved, shouting at her, screaming… And then he was gone, in a nasty coil of black smoke.
And at last, there was silence. The orb still glowed in her hand, but the fog had gone. The black wraiths sucked back down into nothing, and Victoria saw the black crevice begin to smoke harder and faster, thick and musty. Curls billowed up and out, and Max rode forward close to it, pouring holy water down into the crack from three different bottles.
A last puff of smoke, and the ground began to crumble into itself.
The portal was closed.
Twenty-two