Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 3, Portal Guardians (32 page)

He smiled.
 
"I would have liked to have you there.
 
You've got a decent voice - you could have been part of the act."
 
He reached out and pulled me close, walking with his arm around me for a while.

I laughed softly for a second but then stopped.
 
The idea of a simple life of playing guitar and singing for money was so far from my reality right now, it wasn't really that funny.
 
Six months ago, living on the street and singing for change would have seemed so wild, so dangerous, so far-fetched ... and yet here I was strolling through hell with an incubus and a pixie, hunting down dragons and all manner of supernaturals I called friends.
 
Holy quantum shift in perception
.
 
I didn't regret it though, even now, doing this.
 
Life was meant to be lived to the fullest, and no one could call my life boring or pointless now.

Tim came towards us from the path.
 
"We're getting near the place where the dragons live.
 
I can smell them, and there are bones all over the place.
 
Plus some huge piles of dragon doo that I'd rather not ever have to see again, thank you very much.
 
I think I saw a whole dwarf in one of those piles."
 
He fake-shuddered.

"Holy crap, Tim ... are you serious?
 
What'd you tell me that for?"
 
Now the visuals were dancing around in my head, torturing me with their nastiness.

"What'd he say?" asked Spike.

"You don't want to know."

"Maybe I do.
 
Tell me.
 
You never know."

I huffed out a breath.
 
"Fine.
 
There's a big pile of dragon shit up there with a dwarf in it."

Spike's face screwed up in such a mess of disgust I had to laugh.

"I told you that you didn't want to know."

"Dude!" Spike said, aghast.
 
"That is just ... that's just ... wrong, man.
 
Really, really wrong."

"The visuals, right?
 
They're killing you right now?
 
Me too.
 
Fucking pixies."

"Dude's not right."
 
Spike was shaking his head.

We were coming up to a wider section of the path up ahead.
 
Small trees and bushes had been flattened, as if some large machine had come in and just mowed them down.

"Dragon hangout," said Spike, gesturing at the destruction.

I nodded.

"Dragon doo on your right!" yelled Tim, a little too much delight in his voice.

I tried not to look.
 
I really did.
 
But my head dragged my eyes over there, and then I just stared in fascination at the mess before me.

"Damn," said Spike, after following my gaze and stopping once he'd seen the pile.
 
"Dragons sure eat a lot."

I started laughing and couldn't stop.
 
It was too surreal.
 
We were hunting dragons and finding them by their scat, just like the guys on Animal Planet did in those shows Tony and I used to watch.
 
But no pile of crap had ever been this big.

"There
is
a dwarf in that one," said Spike, his voice full of a mixture of fascination and disgust.

I shoved him hard.
 
"Stop looking, stupid!"

Spike shook his head and looked away.
 
"Yeah.
 
Right.
 
Sorry."

Tim came back to land on my shoulder.
 
"There's a large entrance into the side of the hill up ahead.
 
I recommend we do not go in there."

I looked up at the face of rock in front of us.
 
"This isn't a hill, Tim.
 
It's a mountain."

"No, not really.
 
Most of the cave is underground from what I can tell.
 
This is just a big rock here that doesn't continue up.
 
It kind of just drops off on the other side."

I nodded absently, wondering what kind of nasties lived under the ground in the Underworld.
 
Whatever they were, I didn't want to know, and I didn't want to see them.

We picked our way carefully through the dragon crap and bones and other disgusting things that marked the entrance of the dragons' home, reaching the edge of the cave and stopping at its entrance.

"Now where?" I whispered, looking to Spike and Tim for direction.

"You stay here.
 
I'll go ahead and check things out," said Tim, leaving us and advancing into the darkness.

"What's he doing?" whispered Spike, the echoes of its soft hissing bouncing around in front of us.
 
There seemed to be some sort of large opening just inside where we were standing, but it was impossible to see without any decent light coming in from outside.
 
The Underworld was like London on its rainiest day, gray and soggy and depressing.
 
I'd seen a day like that in a British movie once and had never forgotten it.
 
To live in it for ten thousand years or more?
 
Pure torture.
 
No wonder Moriah liked stabbing things for fun. I might too if I were stuck here, just to have a distraction from how awful this place was.

Tim was taking forever to get back.
 
"Where is that little shit?" I said.
 
"He should have been back by now."

"What's he doing?" asked Spike.
 
"Getting a whole map of the place?"

I was getting a really bad feeling.
 
"No.
 
I think something's happened to him.
 
He'd never stay gone this long.
 
Come on.
 
We have to go find him."

Spike grabbed my arm to keep me from going where I was headed.
 
"Wait.
 
Maybe we should find another way in."

"Why?
 
This is good enough."

"Yeah ... except our friends are in trouble and now Tim maybe, too.
 
I think it's fair to say that they probably came through this entrance too, since it's so big and obvious."

I stopped pushing against his arm.
 
"You think there's another way in?"

"If I were a dragon I wouldn't want to be stuck in a place that only had one way in and one way out."

"You've got a point there.
 
It's not good strategy in the Underworld to be stuck like that, probably."

"Come on."
 
Spike took me by the hand and pulled me from the entrance, leading me around the side of the hill.
 
We reached a spot that looked like a turning point in the mound that the dragon lair was inside, but the ground started dropping off steeply.
 
To keep following what looked like the contours of the cave, we had to go uphill now, or diagonal.
 
We were walking with one leg much higher than the other, which was not only awkward but uncomfortable, too.

"What the hell is up with this cave?" I asked.
 
"I thought Tim said it wasn't a mountain."

Spike looked up to our right as we struggled along.
 
"I don't think he's wrong, but it definitely seems like this cave or whatever is bigger than it looked from that other side."

The wind picked up, whistling eerily through the trees, the cool air pushing my sticky hair off my sweaty face.
 
It might have felt nice if it hadn't had the stink of dragon breath on it and carried the sound of unhappy souls.

"Man, oh man, is that creepy," said Spike under his breath.

I could see a lighter gray area ahead, so I picked up the pace a little, anxious to be out of this dark forest that had at least a few orcs that I knew of wandering around in it.

When we finally reached the source of the light, my heart plummeted.

"Wow.
 
That's quite a drop," said Spike, walking up to the edge of the hill that was so steep it probably should have been called a cliff.
 
"How far down do you think it goes?"

"Far enough to kill us if we fall down it?
 
I don't know." I grabbed his shirt and pulled him away from the edge.
 
"Come on.
 
Let's go back."

"We can't go back, we're here now," said Spike, looking at me like I was crazy.

"Here where?
 
This is nowhere!
 
The edge of the Underworld!
 
Look!" I gestured towards the pit that went on forever or far enough that I knew I wanted nothing to do with it.

"Yeah, but here's where we need to go in."
 
Spike had his hands on his hips now and was looking as determined as I'd ever seen him.

I shook my head.
 
"Are we dealing with another mesmerizing?
 
Demon possession?
 
Witch's spell?
 
Because I'm not following."

"Look," said Spike, pointing off to our right, to the face of the cliff that was the back side of the dragon cave's hill.
 
Tim was right.
 
The side that we were was merely a hill.
 
This side was the edge of a cliff, as if a huge mountain had been here and a giant knife had come in and cut three quarters of it away, leaving a jagged but mostly flat face behind.
 
And up near the top of it, was a big, black hole.

"That's a cave.
 
That's where the dragons are going in and out.
 
We were standing at their back door before."

"Their toilet," I said.

"Yeah.
 
Essentially."

"Great.
 
So your plan is to what ... ?
 
Sprout wings and fly up there together?"
 
I threw my hands out, letting them fall down and slap my thighs.
 
"Fine.
 
Go for it.
 
Text me when you're done.
 
Oh wait ... that's right ... we don't have wings or cell phones!"

"Cranky?" he asked me, a smile notching the sexy up about ten levels.

"Shut up.
 
I'm being serious."

"No, you're being sarcastic.
 
I'm the one being serious.
 
Come on, just follow me."

He took me by the hand and pulled me towards the spot where the trees stopped and the rock started.

"This is a bad idea.
 
A seriously bad idea," I complained on the way.
 
"We have no climbing gear, none of those hook things, no ropes ... we're going to fall and become fae pancakes."

"We don't need it.
 
Come on, you'll see."
 
He kept walking, waiting patiently for me as I stepped over bigger and bigger rocks, trying not to sprain my ankle in the process.

We reached the spot where we were on solid rock, and I could finally see why Spike thought it might be possible to go this way.

"See?" he said, gesturing proudly to the chunks of rock sticking out all over the place, that he apparently thought would be sufficient hand and footholds to get us from here to the cave a hundred yards away.

"You must be high on some seriously bad drugs to think that I'm going to climb the side of this cliff to get over there."
 
I turned around.
 
"No thanks.
 
I risk the doo-doo."

He grabbed the sleeve of my tunic and pulled me back.
 
"No, you're not.
 
Come on.
 
We're going this way.
 
They'll never expect to see us out here, so we'll be totally safe."

"Yeah!" I said, in full freak-out mode now.
 
"Except for that little issue of being on the side of a cliff a mile or ten above the ground!"

"It's not a cliff, it's just a very steep hill.
 
See?" he said, going over and starting the journey, "you can lay on the side of it and hang on like this."
 
He put his feet on the nearest small ledge and laid his torso on the rock's face, grasping onto some small outcroppings.

I watched as he sidestepped to the next spot, lying against the rock the whole time.

"See?
 
I'm not even standing up.
 
You've got at least a twenty degree angle towards the hill here, maybe more."

"Cliff.
 
It's a cliff, Spike.
 
Not a hill."
 
I was still complaining, but my feet propelled me forward.
 
I was scared to death, but he was making enough sense that I couldn't argue with him too much without sounding like a big baby.
 
"If I fall, you're going to have to explain to Tony how you forced me to do this.
 
You'll probably end up in the Underworld as punishment."

"Good.
 
Then I'll go down and find your bones and collect them to put in my vampire house."

I grabbed the first set of handholds and walked onto the small ledge Spike was using.
 
"That's just wrong, Spike.
 
Morbid and wrong."

"What can I say?
 
I like the medieval look."

"You and Ben," I said, thinking about his furniture, which was doing a good job of getting my mind off the fact that I was now ten feet out onto this cliff face and not going back.

"He likes the medieval look too?"

"You've seen his room, right?
 
Heavy, vampirey furniture, tapestry with the dragons in it."

"I heard about that tapestry and stuff, after you got all wasted with it.
 
What's the deal with that thing, anyway?"