I managed to open my mouth to scream but I touched the ground too soon for it to become more than a surprised grunt. As if I had fallen only a few feet. Still, I jumped instinctively as if to grab onto the lip above me before whatever I was standing on also collapsed.

And it took entirely too long for me to return to the floor, like there was no gravity. Open air surrounded me, and it was windy as all hell. My feet finally touched the ground again.

“That should have hurt a lot more,” I murmured, crouching against the ridiculously loud wind.

Wait, I knew this sensation… It reminded me of a time when – as a five-year-old – I had been riding down fifty floors in an elevator with my dad and a bunch of his executives. I had looked at him, grinning and said, that makes my balls tickle. The group had erupted in laughter.

I felt my balls tickling right now, folks.

“Oh, shi—” I realized too late what was happening.

I crumpled to the ground like I weighed a million pounds as the floor I was standing on suddenly hammered into something just as hard.

And molten rock flared up around me in a complete circle. I gasped, eyes wide.

I’d landed on a piece of rock from the hall that had also been falling. Then we struck the ocean of lava together.

I groaned, lying on a black circle of stone now in the center of the lava ocean. I glanced up to see a rock bridge, shattered in the center, the two ends like broken teeth reaching towards the new hole I had made. I blinked, still aching from the impact of falling…

Christ, that was a long way up.

My prison cell had been above the ocean of lava? Checking the Map in my mind, I nodded. Yeah. That was right. I just hadn’t ever attempted to search the Map any deeper than my cell, not considering to check what was below me, assuming it was just more rock, not the fucking lava ocean. I grunted as I climbed to my feet, studying the edges of my island, watching as lava slowly oozed over the perimeter, swallowing it.

I was still standing on the bridge I had destroyed. And it was now sinking.

Frantically trying to decide how the hell I was going to get out of this, I didn’t see the sodden cloud until it was too late. It slammed into me like a pile of wet laundry, knocking me perilously close to the molten lava. My skin dried in a heartbeat, only moments away from serious proximity burns or something.

Suddenly, I was yanked back into the center of our temporary rock island.

I stared in relief to find B quivering in midair, sharp crackles of red zapping within his soul.

“I was sleeping, and something woke me up. It feels… stained…” he said uncertainly.

I just nodded. No time for explanations. “We need to get off this rock,” I told him.

Without a word, he wrapped himself around me and began to rise, but before we had gone a few feet, he struggled, and we began to drift back down to the ever-shrinking circle of rock. “I can’t fly any higher with you. You’re too heavy. Or I’m too tired,” he said, terror creeping into his voice.

“Fly…” I repeated dumbly. I reached into my satchel and pulled out a feather. “GRIMM!”

I grabbed onto B, holding him like a football under my arm as black cords of lightning the size of miniature tornados slammed into the lava all around us, exploding in geysers of liquid rock. My Alicorn swept us up into the air not a moment too soon. I could smell burning leather and rubber from my boots. B shivered under my arm, wrapping himself around me in fear.

“Fucking idiot!” Grimm snapped angrily. “You trying to get yourself killed? And why cloak yourself? I heard you calling, but couldn’t find you!” His fangs actually clicked shut at the end.

“Virgin ears,” I snapped back at him, indicating B.

He snorted most indelicately, pumping his shadow wings until we reached one of the broken edges of the bridge I had destroyed. “Land here for a second, Grimm.”

“Why – the fuck – do you want to land, you crazy bastard?” he snapped, but he did obey, skidding his silver hooves across the black rock.

I climbed off his back, holding B at arm’s length for a moment. “You okay, kid?”

He quivered, which I took for a nod.

“Okay. I need you to do me a favor. Hop into my satchel. I need to keep you safe.” Without a word, he shifted into the satchel as I held it open. “Keep your… top close to the top,” I said lamely, not familiar with Beast biology. “Just, stay near the open part.”

He did, and I made sure he wasn’t about to fall into oblivion or anything. I would have asked him to hop into one of the other things inside, but they were all incredibly dangerous, and there was no telling what might happen.

I looked up at Grimm who was eyeing the spear in my fist. He looked… very alert. But we didn’t have time to worry about that yet. We needed to get out of here. I carefully slid the spear into my satchel, preferring to have my hands free in case I fell off Grimm or needed to grab onto B or something. And if anything approached me, I wanted to feel them die up close.

I stared down at the Candy Skull Mask, and a very slow smile split my cheeks. I turned it back and forth, studying it. I even reached inside it with my Fae magic, verifying that it was just a mask. A powerful material, but not anything that would do me harm. I held it out to Grimm. “Sniff this. Does it feel dangerous?”

He did and snorted. “The previous occupant was… decaying rapidly, but it’s just a mask.”

I nodded, and popped it on over my face. Then I climbed onto Grimm’s back, telling him where to go with a lightning quick assessment, the Map seeming to understand my desire. He launched into the air, flapping those great shadow wings like we were fleeing an erupting volcano. Perhaps we were.

I shouted commands into his ears on instinct, the Map seeming to speak to me, as he flew. It was much faster astride Grimm, flying over various labyrinth’s and mazes, pockets of cells that would have guaranteed a deadly fight, and the vast open ocean of blood that would have taken me forever to walk across.

That didn’t mean it was uneventful. Not in the slightest. The initial shock of seeing the Candy Skull mask over my head saved us from quite a few conflicts. But in those large open spaces where we had nowhere to hide, they soon realized we weren’t what we pretended to be.

A handful of Candy Skulls peeled off from the ceiling, those arachnid ones.

I grunted. Stupid idiots. I opened my mouth to tell Grimm to simply dodge them, letting them fall past us, when giant wings made of spider webs erupted from their backs, one great big pump of those sticky wings sending them gliding straight towards us at impossible speeds.

I lashed out with whips of red flame, and then thinking of Talon’s cat of nine tails weapon, I made sure each tip broke off into nine tips instead of the one. I even made the tips shaped like crucifixes, just to be an asshole. The added focus hit me heavily, but it also created a ridiculous number of streams of fire for the Candy Skulls to avoid.

Each whip that struck a wing lit it up like flash paper, and the Candy Skull hissed as it fell. Grimm made short work of the last Warden, not bothering to let it fall after I sliced off its wings, but deciding to stab it through the face with his horn. He shook it off violently, the mask ringing around his horn where he had pierced it. Like ring toss.

After that we tried harder to stay concealed. Not that we feared taking on any more of the Candy Skulls, but we knew it was only a matter of time before alarms went off, or one of them decided on calling in backup rather than taking us on directly.

So Grimm kept his fiery eyes alert for dangers, staying close to walls and corners rather than flying through the center of the various caverns. We still attracted attention from the hordes of souls, all shouting, cursing, and screaming at us for leaving them behind.

I reached into the satchel, placing my hand on B’s… head, I think. “You okay?” I asked, keeping my eyes out for danger.

“Yes. I’m feeling better.”

“Good. Just a little longer. We’re almost there,” I said. “I’ve been seeing through your eyes… And you called me the Catalyst…”

“Yes,” he replied.

“What is a Catalyst?” I asked, scanning our surroundings quickly.

B hesitated, the flickers of green and silver popping back and forth inside him faster for a few seconds. The red had faded, but was still there. “It’s like a whisper to me. A memory of a dream. A promise to my kind, I think. But I don’t fully understand. Maybe I can ask mother…” he said, sounding sorry he couldn’t offer a better answer.

I smiled down at him. “That would be great. I don’t understand it myself. You caught me off guard when you said it is all.”

I leaned forward to pass on a few directions to Grimm after a quick assessment of our location with the Map. We were moving fucking fast. I’d almost missed telling him to turn down the tunnel that would save us an hour of flight time.

I felt his muscles bunch up beneath me as he shifted course. He should be good for a few minutes. Unless we were attacked. We were almost upon the Arch where I had first entered Hell so long ago. I knew the only way out was to break the smoky ceiling window high above, but I wasn’t sure if I had anything strong enough to do it. I would just use overwhelming force.

‘Merica style.

“B, I need to know what else is happening up there. What else you’ve seen. We may have trouble when we return…” I said, suddenly thinking of the wolves, and Raego, and White Fang. God, they felt like they were a million years in the past after everything else I’d seen. But I needed to know what we were walking into. If it had anything to do with the… thing I had released from Hell. He obviously hated King Arthur and his pals. And my dear old ancestor had just taken one of those Knights into Fae – the only lead on Avalon we had yet to find.

B suddenly wrapped himself around my palm, and my mind exploded with visions.

Wolves tearing through the streets at night, hundreds of them.

Dragons arguing hotly with each other, on the verge of violence.

Yahn and the Reds arguing with Tory.

Alucard and Roland talking in a dirty, dilapidated building that looked like an old church.

I gasped as B let go. I gripped Grimm’s feathered mane with both fists, reeling with dizziness to find I was flying hundreds of feet in the air, not standing in St. Louis. I panted, shaking my head. I glanced down at B. “Thank you, B. When… when was this?” I managed.

“Before I came to find you. I don’t know time very well yet. They spoke of war coming soon when I left. Perhaps he has already left again?”

I flinched. “War, a person?” I asked nervously.

Grimm answered for me. “No. Not the Rider. The bubbling cauldron between factions that White Fang has riled up.” He snorted suddenly. “Looks like they’re expecting us.”

I glanced up to see masses of shades and Candy Skulls on the other side of the Arch where we had first entered Hell so long ago. I placed a comforting hand on B’s head and then closed the satchel. I gritted my teeth as Grimm flapped his wings harder.

“Looks like they’re throwing a going away party,” I muttered.