Waltzing into Damnation

  Waltzing

  into

  Damnation

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Rita Stradling Books

  Edited by Karen Boston

  Cover by Covers by Combs

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit this book in any form or by any means. For subsidiary rights, please contact the author.

  Email: ritastradling@yahoo.com

  Waltzing into Damnation

  Prologue

  About Ten Months Ago

  The sun’s heat mercilessly cooks my pale skin everywhere my black dress wraps its restraints around me. Though Sweden is barely hotter than Northern California in August, the sun leans into my oppressive mourning dress, making it and this funeral even more unbearable.

  I do not want to be in Sweden, especially not at Leijonskjöld Slott.

  I do not want to be at a memorial service.

  But most of all, I don’t want to be at Stephen Tapper’s service.

  Beside me, my sister Linnie sniffles. She presses her fingers into her eyes as her breaths come out in wet rasps. Her usually rosy and pale complexion breaks out in huge, red splotches. Brown hair lies messily about her head. My sister’s emotions always come out wet, messy things.

  Whereas my emotions form solid masses inside of me—like tumors, slowly killing me from deep within.

  Linnie smashes her lips as if she could dam her grief in her mouth.

  I don’t blame her for wanting to stifle the sound of her sobbing. Though the men around us look somber and stoic, these men always look solemn, and her obvious signs of sorrow at this funeral seem somehow inappropriate.

  Stephen Tapper’s funeral was declared to be a private, family-only service in the Leijonskjöld Slott grave plot. However, by ‘private family only,’ they meant only having three hundred Leijonskjöld Slott demon killers lined up in rows perpendicular to the stone wall watching ten priests chanting.

  My sister, my friend Cassidy Dixon, and I stand off to the side on the Slott’s sizable lawn— we three make up the unofficial outcast zone.

  Every aspect of the funeral is so formal and so un-Stephen like.

  “Lord God, we beseech you to care for Stephen Tapper’s soul,” the priests chant over and over before switching to another language, possibly Latin. They lift books and crosses and goblets as their heavy robes ripple in the wind.

  It is all a lie.

  We stand above a bodiless grave, a grave for a body that still moves and breathes and lives. They beseech God to take a soul that has not yet been released to him.

  Everyone knows about Stephen’s body. In the past month since the demon Andras possessed it, Stephen’s body has left a trail of dead demon killers from Thailand to central China.

  Only I know about Stephen’s soul.

  “Don’t worry, Raven,” Cassidy says in her English-accented voice from beside me.

  When I pivot to see Cassidy, she does not look away from the priests. The rigid set of her jaw and pucker between her brows look anything but empty of emotion. Dark shadows fall under her eyes, and her usually rich brown complexion looks washed out, almost sickly. Even so, she’s so naturally graceful, I can’t believe I never guessed she isn’t completely human before I saw the truth of it.

  Cassidy continues, “Tobias planned this funeral.” She looks over and gives me a small, sad smile that almost hints at the humor that usually lives at the corner of her lips. “This is not Stephen’s true funeral. We will have that this evening.”

  This funeral feels more representative of Tobias than Stephen by a landslide. Tobias, Stephen’s pompous asshat of a brother, stands across the crowd from us, back ramrod straight and nose pointing skyward. His complexion is so pale, it seems to be reflecting the sun back at me.

  I can’t judge that though, as I’m sure mine is doing the same to others.

  Turning back to the singing priests, my gaze sticks on the sky directly above the thirty-foot stone wall that encircles Leijonskjöld Slott.

  A raven rides the air currents, its black wings flashing out feathers to each of its sides. I glance at Cassidy to see if she notices the bird, but she’s still watching the priests. When I look again to the sky, there are three birds. Then there are five. Then twenty.

  I point to the sky. “Cassidy, are they…?”

  Cassidy startles and peers up to where I’m pointing. Her eyelids narrow at where now close to a hundred black birds head for the Leijonskjöld Slott ground’s outer wall. “Don’t worry. Those are probably natural birds going after some decaying animal nearby. Even if they’re demonically infected, they’re in animal form, too demon to come past the wall and onto hallowed ground.”

  Though Cassidy’s words sound reassuring, her body language isn’t. She takes a step forward, tenses her muscles and shades her eyes against the glare of the sun.

  Linnie grips my forearm. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” I whisper.

  There’s a breath of silence, and then the giant stone wall explodes inward. The resounding roar of the explosion deafens me for a long moment, leaving only a ringing in my ears. Stones, dirt, and dust fly in all directions.

  Someone shoves me to the ground. My knee, shoulder, and cheek collide with the hard-packed earth, and immediately a body presses me down further.

  A chorus of grunts, cries and ragged bellows of pain ring out. Dust swallows the air, settling on my exposed cheek and eyelash. I blink it furiously away as pebbles rain down, striking my hands and the side of my face.

  “Get down, Linnie!” I shout. I try to push up and scrabble out from under the body I think is Cassidy to get to Linnie, but it’s useless; her hold is too strong.

  “I’m here!” Linnie shouts as she curls up beside me.

  I swallow dust with my inhale and sling my arm out to cover my sister’s head with my hand. And then there is only the sound of the rocks plunking, dirt pattering, and people screaming.

  All of it hushes into a sudden silence.

  This quiet somehow feels so much heavier than the sound of the explosion.

  The body that covers me rolls off, and I glance up to see, as I suspected, Cassidy, crouching over me. She jumps up to her feet and freezes, her body as rigid as iron.

  Blinking through the lingering dust in the air, I gaze upon the wreckage. Ravaged and bloody, the priests and demon killers all gape at the source of the explosion. Everyone stands locked in a shared moment of horror, staring at the yawning hole in the stone.

  Numbering the birds at a hundred had been a gross underestimation. Thousands of ravens swarm, soar, dive, and launch just beyond the hole where the wall had been. In the middle of the shifting wings stands one figure, one demon, and his luminous green eyes fix on mine.

  Andras.

  Giant black wings extend so far from Andras’s back that their feathers brush the ruined remains of the wall on each side. He looks the same as the last time I saw him. His blond hair lies tousled. The red scar bisecting his cheek stands out against his tan complexion even from this distance.

  Andras is returning Stephen’s body to its funeral.

  How thoughtful of him.

  My stomach squeezes so hard, I might be sick, but I can’t tear my gaze from Andras’s electric green eyes. I stand, mesmerized, petrified into a statue.

  Though Tobias is on the other side of the wreckage from me, nearer to Andras by perhaps a hundred feet, I hear his high-pitched yell as if he screamed directly into m
y ear. “Kill it! Aim for the demon’s neck!”

  Then I’m hurtling forward, leaping over the wall’s littered debris, pushing past the line of fire. Sharper sounds than wind whistle past my ears.

  Gunshots.

  I hurdle over the last layer of debris and crash into Andras’s chest. My already sore cheek collides with his shoulder, exploding with pain.

  Andras either staggers back or takes a few steps away from the wall deliberately, I’m not sure. His arms and giant black wings wrap around me, cocooning me in their darkness.

  “Raven,” Andras whispers in my ear as he presses me ever tighter into him, “as much as I appreciate you caring, please never again protect my body with yours.”

  He’s taken on Stephen’s accent, and it makes my stomach roil.

  “It’s not your body I’m protecting. This body belongs to Stephen,” I whisper through harsh breathing.

  He spins me, his feathers brushing my skin from all sides.

  “I am returning for you on the first day of summer,” he whispers. “In the next months, put your affairs in order and say your goodbyes if you feel the need. Create a believable reason for your final departure for those who do not know the true reason.”

  My voice comes out high pitched. “I only promised to spend twenty-four days with you —”

  “You promised me twenty-four days, but I have no plan to ever let you leave me again.” He leans back so I can look into Stephen… Andras’s face. A slight smile pulls up the corner of his lips as his neon-green gaze bores into me. And then his lips lower and hover over mine, just barely not closing the distance.

  My brain must have short-circuited because I know I should push him away and punch him, but I freeze.

  He is the one who breaks away. In a flurry of feathers and a sudden release, Andras launches into the air. Behind him, the thousands of birds that circled us speed after him.

  Suddenly, I’m alone, standing in the wreckage of the wall.

  A shimmer catches my eye. A line of silver liquid just beyond the wall gleams against the bright sunshine.

  It takes my addled brain a few long moments to recognize what it is: melted bullets. Like the time two years ago when Andras liquefied my gun and sword, he must have melted the bullets the moment they passed out of hallowed ground.

  I take a deep breath and turn to the lines of hundreds of men whose gun barrels aim straight at me.

  There’s a second of silence, and then Albert and Nicholas yell the same command, a beat out of sync. “Weapons down!”

  In the next months, put your affairs in order…

  Cassidy is suddenly at my side, hands brusquely checking me for injuries. Richard Jones follows closely behind Cassidy, yelling at her to get me back onto hallowed ground.

  Say your goodbyes…

  An injured priest cries out, “Help me! Please! I …. I’m bleeding!”

  Orders echo around us.

  Demon killers run in all directions. Cassidy and Richard Jones yell across me at each other while they pull and push me back into the disaster area.

  I am returning for you on the first day of summer…

  Tobias’s pinched face leans in, just over Cassidy’s shoulder, more furious than I’ve ever seen him before. His hand points to my face. “Traitor! She protected the demon! Demon whore!”

  Albert roars something, but I look to the sky. My body feels hollow as if I might float away if Cassidy and Richard Jones weren’t both holding me to the Earth.

  I have no plan ever to let you leave me again.

  “Cassidy,” I rasp, then stronger, “Cassidy.”

  “You self-righteous bastard, get away from her,” Cassidy yells with her hand warding Tobias off.

  I lean into her ear and say, “Cassidy?”

  She wheels around.

  I swallow, then lean in to whisper so only she hears. “I need your help… to save Stephen.”

  As I grip Cassidy’s arm, she stares at me, brow furrowed. “What?”

  I pull Cassidy to me, whispering, “I need your help because I’m going to find a way to get Andras out of Stephen’s body. I dreamt it… I know it’s real…it’s possible. But I only have ten months before Andras takes me, and I don’t know what’s going to happen then.”

  Cassidy says nothing, her mouth still agape. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath, nods, and grips my arm almost to the point of pain. “I’ll help.”

  “Oh my God! They’re coming back!” Linnie yells.

  Cassidy and I turn at the same moment, gazes rising to where everyone else now stares.

  The ravens.

  Where there had only been a thousand before, the mass that flies toward us must be more in the millions, their shadows rolling over the Earth like a giant wave. The black birds pump their wings straight for us, their flight impossibly fast.

  And then the storm of wings is only feet away. But as if they meet an invisible barrier, they break direction, parting at the hole in the giant cobblestone wall. Funneling around Leijonskjöld Slott like a river avoiding a boulder, the birds envelop all but a small circle of the sky. Andras has unleashed his legions of demonic birds. The plague has begun.

  Chapter One

  Four Days Before

  Looking off the edge of the big purple Victorian mansion I call home, I realize that this may be one of my dumbest plots to escape so far. Unfortunately, that’s saying something. The rusty ladder my success is solely contingent on breaks off three rungs down, and the fall to the concrete below is thirty-plus feet. Yet again, I wasted a month of planning to find myself in a jail-break nonstarter.

  “Get down from there!”

  I glance up from the broken ladder and over to the window I climbed out of ten minutes ago.

  One of the Leijonskjöld soldier’s heads sticks out. He examines the deeply sloped third story roof I perch on. Between us, wisps of mist rise from the damp roof tiles. “What are you doing?”

  Busted.

  His slicked-back blond hair reflects the early morning sun as he aims a death-glare over at me. It’s remarkable he’s addressing me at all. He’s probably new or something. Usually they just talk about me, rarely to me unless it’s, “Stay back.”

  “Just taking in the view,” I call over, waving at what was once a very nice view of the Humboldt Bay. Now, between the rooftops of what remains of my hometown, no inch of space sits unoccupied all the way down to the barricades at the edge of town. In a town known for its high homeless population, we’ve learned a new understanding of the words.

  “You have three minutes to climb back down here, or we will come up there and help you down.” Then under his breath, I hear him say, “Djävulens hora.” The devil’s whore.

  The insult doesn’t quite have the sting it once did, but it still makes me roll my eyes. ‘Devil’s whore’ is pretty much becoming my pet-name at this point with the Leijonskjöld demon-killing asshats.

  Truly, I’m by definition the opposite of a whore, as I’m both unemployable and a twenty-year-old virgin. Even knowing how very untrue it is, the insinuation that I’m Andras’ whore has my palm itching to slap the guy.

  In fact, the insult sort of makes me wish that the Leijonskjöld guy does come after me and just happens to trip and fall off the roof. Immediately, I have to swallow down the cold feeling that guts me for having such a violent thought and shake my head to dislodge the images that fill my mind.

  The man obviously thinks I’m shaking my head at him because even though two full minutes totally didn’t go by, he calls, “One minute.”

  Yeah, whatever.

  Instead of climbing toward him, which I’m guessing his outstretched hand signals for me to do, I climb up the damp shingle slope.

  A loud thud sounds behind me, and when I glance back, the Blond Beefcake climbs out onto the roof, his blue gaze meeting mine. Crud. I push at the slightly open window, but it refuses to yield. Holding my breath, I yank a little harder. With an exhale of pressure and loud creek, it opens.

>   Hopping through the window, I immediately slam it shut and turn the knob, locking it before brushing my dirty hands off on my jeans. Beefcake appears outside the window a second later, his big blond head almost taking up the whole view. Honestly, I’m not sure he’d even fit through. He tries to get his big fingers into the crack between the wooden window sash but gives up with a glare at me.

  I bare my teeth as he begins to turn away. See you later, ass-a-gator. The thought makes me chuckle even though it’s so stupid. Beefcake ignores my wave and deftly lumbers down the roof tiles.

  Linnie isn’t here, and the padlock she was supposed to lock the hatch with sits beside it. Unfortunately, it looks as if I wasn’t the only one busted. Even though I know the escape plan is well and truly dead, I cross to the closed hatch, shift the metal latch over and lock it.

  Sighing, I turn back to the window. The view is horrifyingly familiar, and yet every time I’m permitted to see it, the city deteriorates.

  It’s strange that those thick sandbag barricade lines are my finish line. To everyone else, they’re the barricade that separates between relative safety and where every bird in the sky will attack. The barricades aren’t solely made of sandbags. Also cars, washers, dryers, and overturned RVs poke out from the makeshift wall that circles the entire city.

  The crack of a gunshot splits the air, and off in the distance, a raven falls from the sky to land beyond the barricade. Thousands of ravens take flight, speeding at the soldiers on the sandbags and turning their course at the true barrier that keeps them out. Our strongest defense, hallowed ground, something priests reinforce three times daily by blessing the land.

  It’s needed, as the wall wasn’t erected only to keep the birds out. The people of the northern California tri-county area learned quickly that the birds had their limitations on where they could go, but the mobs of murderous tattooed humans did not. No new soulbound could be created, but the ones left over from the last carrion flu epidemic proved to be a big enough army. The soulbound all had one mission: kill me and anyone blocking their way to me. Their reward for my murder: their souls unbound from eternal torment.