Zagg poked a thumb toward a line on the floor. "Bella put up a shield ward. She and Meghan said the malaether can't go through it."
"Malaether?"
"Yeah. That's what they're calling the corrupted aether. Mal as in bad."
I imagined a seething cauldron of malaether hovering like a poisonous cloud on the other side of the shield. I hoped Meghan would be able to use drain wards to heal the sick students.
"Ready to get to work?" Shelton asked as he and Bella came down the stairs.
I nodded confidently, but the nervous clenching in my stomach offered a sobering reminder that even if I could see the ward guarding the arch shield, we might not be able to do anything about it. I followed the two Arcanes through the dungeon, past the gauntlet room Lina had used, and toward the pulsating, glowing orb of death in the room with the arch.
"How long do I have before I keel over?" I asked, my skin tingling as if it were already mutating from the malaether.
"It takes several days of this much exposure to sicken most people," Bella said. "Your supernatural healing might protect you."
"I'm using a shield," Shelton said, his voice sounding a bit muffled. Tiny sparks erupted around him like bugs in a zapper.
I regarded the arch for a moment, closed my eyes, and extended my essence as if searching for prey. When I opened my eyes, I saw a glowing shield stretched tight across the arch, except for a noticeable bulge, like a dent in stressed metal, where the brilliant sphere of malaether sparkled.
What really caught my attention was a strange black lump floating in front of the shield, tethered to the ground by a thin black strand. Though a thick layer of dust covered the floor beneath it, I saw traces of glowing lines. I wandered closer to the balloon-shaped oddity. Careful to avoid the glowing lines, I stepped to within a few feet, and peered at it.
The black mass quivered.
I shrieked like a girl and jump back about twenty feet.
"What is it?" Shelton asked.
I described what I saw.
"A guardian ward," Bella said, her voice almost a whisper. "This will be even harder than I thought."
Regaining some courage, I walked back up to the tumor-like mass. "Hello?" I said, the greeting more of a question than statement.
A glistening white eye with a blood-red iris blinked open. The middle of the orb split, open in a display of serrated teeth. A low growl vibrated against my eardrums.
"Uh, what's that noise?" Shelton said.
"Perhaps you shouldn't talk to it," Bella said, backing toward the door along with Shelton. "Justin, come away from there at once."
I stared at the eye monster, suddenly feeling angry. Why was it growling at me?
How dare it show me disrespect.
I blinked, suddenly wondering where in the world that last thought had come from. Disrespect? Why would I think that? I took a breath, and regarded the thing as it continued to snarl. One of my tendrils wandered close to it, as if drawn there like a magnet. I jerked it back before I touched the disgusting thing. The demon part of my soul clawed against my control, as if suddenly driven insane, like a caged dog foaming at the mouth as it tried to kill a cat on the other side.
Somehow, my inner beast recognized this guardian. But how and why?
The answer came to me an instant later. To confirm my suspicions, I closed my eyes and switched off my incubus sight. When I opened my eyes, I looked at the area where the dust covered the floor. Not daring to take another step closer, I stared at the floor right about where the giant eyeball hovered, its growl only now fading away. I wasn't about to walk into that area.
"If you sent a stiff breeze in here, would it trigger the guardian?" I asked.
"I don't think so," Bella said from the other side of the hole in the wall.
"I need you to clear that dirt." I pointed it out.
The dhampyr took a nervous breath. Nodded. "Stand to the side."
I backed away from the center, and watched.
Bella took out a slender wand, and moved it in a whirling motion, faster and faster as she chanted under her breath. Her voice grew louder, and then as if blowing a kiss, she blew air the length of her wand, her cheeks puffing out like a little girl blowing bubbles.
A blast of air nearly knocked me off my feet as it rushed past, clearing away dust and debris. Even though it didn't clear the floor completely, it was enough. A twisting shape of spirals and other odd geometric shapes caught the light from the room. Etched into the floor and lined with a silvery metallic substance, the rune confirmed what I'd suspected. I'd seen designs like this in one of my mom's books when I was a nosy kid. It looked somewhat similar to the one I'd seen as a child when gray men had placed a chunk of plywood studded with nails in an intricate pattern beneath Sandy Andretti's house and powered it with electrical generators.
This rune looked simpler than the one I'd seen as a child. Whether that meant anything, I didn't know. What I did know was this: the giant eyeball was a demon.
Chapter 42
"A demon?" Shelton said, face aghast as I told them about my discovery.
"Now I know why my demon side was so pissed off." I shook my head. "It didn't like being growled at by another demon."
"We are so very screwed," Shelton said.
We crossed the line where Bella's shield guarded the tunnel from malaether. Zagg and Cinder looked up from their work.
Shelton jabbed a thumb my way. "One of Justin's long-lost cousins is guarding the freaking shield."
"This is very fortunate," Cinder said. "If one of your family members is guarding it, they may be more likely to give us access."
Shelton rolled his eyes. "No, you walking bucket of bolts. It's a full-fledged demon. Looks like Moore and the gang inscribed a summoning rune, and gave a demon eternal guard duty."
"Your description of me is rather inaccurate," Cinder said, looking at his body. "I am not a bucket—"
"A demon?" Zagg said, eyes wide. "There's no way we can get past the shield and a demon in a week." He pounded the table where the ASE spun, shook his head. "Damn it. It's all been for nothing, hasn't it? This place and everyone in it is—they're all going to die, and there's nothing we can do to stop it."
Bella gave him a helpless look. "I'm sorry, but this is beyond me. Beyond any of us."
Zagg shook his head. "No. I won't let them die. We need to force an evacuation. Not everyone will escape, but I'm going to give them a chance."
"How?" Shelton said. "If you run around telling everyone this place is gonna blow, you'll look like a raving lunatic."
"And let the Conroys know about the rune," Bella said.
"So what?" Zagg threw up his arms. "They won't be able to get to it, not with a demon guarding it. Let them blow up with the place. At least then Daelissa will never get her hands on it." He headed toward the stairs. "I don't know how I'll do it. If I have to make up something, I will."
Cinder turned his steady gaze to me. "Justin, what is the demon's name?"
"His name?" I said, imagining both eyebrows arching like mirrored question marks. "How should I know that?"
"You are part demon. Can you not communicate with him?"
I almost replied with a sarcastic remark, but suddenly remembered the demon in Sandy Andretti's basement. It had burst from the summoning rune through her floorboards, and then bitten her leg off. I'd found her outside bleeding to death. I'd run inside the house and seen my mother barely holding the demon, a giant, green, shark-like monster with tiny red eyes all over its snout. It had spoken to me in a deep guttural voice. I'd spoken in that same voice before while a demon. The strange tongue wasn't Cyrinthian, although it felt similar in the way it rolled off the tongue.
Could I remember how to speak that language again? Or was the knowledge buried too deep inside me?
Zagg froze on the stairs. He turned and looked at Cinder. "Your question made me think of something." He stopped the spinning ASE on his table, sorted through a bowl of them, and plucked one out. After it spun up, Zagg opened a document and scrolled through it until he reached a passage. "Listen to this. 'We spoke of the inconsequential before wandering back to the solemn duty. I knew my time for small talk would soon be ending. The Lady understood as she always did, and said she would miss our conversations. I knew the infernal name would remain safe with her until the proper time.'"
"Infernal name," I said. "A demon name. We have to talk to the Lady of the Pond!"
"Wait," Zagg said. "I don't know why this didn't stick out before. I guess I was zoning out. There's more you should hear." He traced the Latin words with his fingers, and resumed translating. "'Safer subjects followed, but then the Lady turned to the subject of children. I am no lover of the infantile. The rigors of raising youth holds no appeal for me, although my friends assure me once I have a child, my feelings will change. However, if the foreseeances remain true, I will have a child, though not of my own loins. She will be the harbinger of the Return. She will also signal the time of action. Though, in truth, I dread this child, it will be her child that holds the key to revenge or our destruction.'"
I watched Zagg for a moment before realizing he was done reading. "Um, so Moore was gonna have kids?"
"How very odd," Bella said, fingers resting thoughtfully on her chin. "Didn't Moore die childless?"
Zagg nodded. "He died not long after this. There is no record of him having adopted a child."
I shrugged. "Maybe he did and kept it a secret," I said. "It doesn't matter. The Lady of the Pond knows the name of the guardian."
"She might know the name," Shelton said. "Don't get your hopes up."
"Fine." I headed toward the stairs. "I'm going to have a talk with her."
"Lead the way," Shelton said.