Even Vampires Get The Blues

Bless his heart, Paen didn't bother with asking unimportant questions—he simply merged himself with me, filling me, holding me, binding me to him, and what was most important at that moment, yanking both Clare and me out of the beyond, back onto the cliff shelf on the Lammermuir Hills.

I threw myself into Paen's arms, unmindful of the sharp corners of the bits of statue I held clutched to my body, so grateful to be away from Caspar, tears mingled with the kisses I pressed to his face.

"Clare," Finn shouted from the plain below.

"I'm all right," she yelled back, going to the edge to wave at him. "But that demon lord was awful! He was the most horrible thing I've ever seen!"

Behind us, the stone groaned as if in protest.

"He was hideous, all black and twisted and misshapen!"

The sound of a thousand souls in agony ripped through us as the fabric of being was shredded.

"I think I would die if I were ever to see him again, he was just that awful," Clare called to Finn.

Caspar stepped out of the beyond, power coiled around him like snakes, writhing and twisting, snapping at everything they could reach. The ground shook, as if protesting Caspar's presence in such a sacred spot.

"I see you found my statue," he said, his voice filled with the promise of eternal torment. "I will take it back now, if you don't mind."

An immense cracking noise rent the air, causing everyone to cover their ears. The rocky shelf we stood on shattered, the stone crashing to the ground below, taking us with it.

Chapter 20

The silence that followed the roar of rocks and shrieks of the soft, squishy humans (or variations thereof) as they fell to the ground was almost as deafening in its absence as the sound was previously.

Samantha? Are you hurt?

I groaned and shoved a cantaloupe-sized bit of boulder from my arm before rolling off Paen. My left wrist might be broken. It hurts bad enough that I may barf. Are you OK? Why did you grab me right as we fell? I must have crushed you when we hit the ground.

I grabbed you so you wouldn't be crushed. Let me see your arm.

A red wave of pain and nausea threatened to overwhelm me as I struggled into a sitting position, my hurt arm held tight to my chest. "I'm fine," I told Paen as he tried to examine my arm. He had a nasty gash in his cheek that spilled blood down the side of his face, but he looked relatively all right. "Find Clare."

"Clare? Where are you, love?" Finn loomed next to me, hurling rocks aside as he searched for my cousin. "Can you hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you," came a muffled reply from about ten feet away. Finn gave a relieved shout and flung rocks willy-nilly until Clare's torso was uncovered.

"What about Pilar and Caspar?" I asked Paen as he turned back to me. The rear side of him was covered in blood, his shirt tattered and bloody from where he had hit the debris-strewn ground. Beyond him, Uilleam and the ghosts approached, leaping from rock to rock.

Paen snarled an oath as he helped me to my feet. "Who the hell cares about them?"

"Oh! Just look at this shirt! Just look at it! It's completely ruined!" Clare pushed aside Finn's helpful hand as she lunged a few feet away to where Pilar and Beppo emerged unscathed from behind a truck-sized boulder. I was glad to see that despite being bloody and filthy, Clare hadn't been hurt.

A state that would change if she had her way.

"This is the second outfit of mine you've ruined," she screeched at Pilar, snatching up a rock and brandishing it. "This shirt is raw silk, hand-screened by Donna Karan herself! And now it's totally ruined!"

"Clare, no, he's the monkey god! You can't hit a god!" I yelled, but not before she cracked Pilar upside the head with the stone. He stared in stark surprise at her for a moment, then threw his head back and roared his fury to the night sky.

"Christ on a handcar, I can't take her anywhere," I swore, starting toward her—but at the exact moment that Pilar turned his furious eyes to my cousin, an explosion sent us all ducking. Debris rained down upon us, rocks and sticks and chunks of earth pelting us without discretion, the air thick with the stink of demons as Caspar emerged from a pyramid of broken rock. Behind him, a good hundred or so demons swarmed out of the ground, leaping onto the nearby rocks, their shrieks cutting into the night.

"Sun Wukong!" Caspar bellowed, his face black with rage.

"Oh, shit," I said, watching in horror as Caspar flung open his arms and called up his demon horde.

"My feelings exactly," Paen answered, scooping me up in his arms and hauling me to the large rock Uilleam was perched on. "May I?" he asked, setting me down before holding out his hand.

"Sun Wukong, you have deceived me!" Caspar screamed, pointing at Pilar.