Serpent's Storm by Amber Benson Page A

all my Afterlife adventuring, I’d never personally been on the tendering end of anything as potent as the power surge we were experiencing. I had hopes that the catalyst was the three inches of water we were sitting in while trying to open the wormhole, but I was pretty sure this was only wishful thinking.
    Another burst of energy shot through my body—I was beginning to wish I had a circuit breaker—and my head began to throb as a deafening crack split the atmosphere around us, charging the air with electricity. All the hair on my body bristled and I could taste the electrical current with my tongue. Another booming crack split the air, almost as if a mini thunderstorm had found its way into the bathroom, and a pinprick of light appeared, hanging like a crystalline teardrop in the middle of the room. The overhead lights began to strobe and then went out completely, which should have reduced my visibility down to zero, but I found I could see just as well in the dark as I could in the glare of the fluorescent light.
    I watched, fascinated, as the wormhole began to unfold like a lotus flower, each petal of light ripping apart the darkness until it had rent a gaping hole right in the very fabric of time and space, enticing us forward. I was entranced by the wormhole, the way its edges sputtered and twirled with energy as it continued to eat away at the darkness. It seemed to grow larger with every second, consuming more and more of the matter surrounding it.
    “You ready?” I asked, slipping my arms around his rib cage and lifting him onto his hooves. He didn’t answer me, merely nodded his head. Together, we stepped forward, the humid heat from the other side of the wormhole steam-cleaning my pores.
    “It’s like a sauna in there,” I said, my voice starting to go hoarse from all the beating my throat had taken. “Where does it go?”
    Again Jarvis didn’t answer me but, instead, took another step toward the wormhole. I grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back to me. I wanted some kind of assurance we weren’t going back to Hell. I’d spent a good chunk of the last few months wandering around the place, and I had no intention of going back there without my knowledge.
    “If that thing’s going to Hell,” I began, digging in my heels, “then I’m staying in the flood plain.”
    Jarvis raised his head so he was looking into my eyes.
    “I swear on my life that we will not be visiting Hell,” Jarvis said.
    “Okay,” I replied, feeling like I’d gotten back at least some control over the situation. “Let’s do this thing.”
    I let Jarvis take my hand, giving him no resistance as he pulled me toward the light. Suddenly, the bathroom door flew open and my now former boss, Hyacinth Stewart, stood framed in the doorway, her spun white gold hair like a halo around her head. She wasn’t in the same outfit I’d last seen her in—apparently she was a quick-change artist—but instead had donned a thin white sheath dress and a flowing cloak of what appeared, upon first glance, to be falcon feathers.
    “Stay away from the wormhole,” she intoned, forcing her way through the door and into the bathroom, the bottom of her cloak seeming to magically float just above the waterline.
    “Okay, hold on there—” I began, but Hyacinth placed one meaty hand on my shoulder and the other on Jarvis’s and physically drew us away from the wormhole.
    “They are monitoring all the wormholes. It isn’t safe for you to travel this way,” Hyacinth said to Jarvis, who stared up at the hulking woman, glassy-eyed—with lust or pain, I couldn’t have told you which.
    “Come away from here before they discover that you were the ones who called it,” she continued, pointing to the fast-growing seam of light.
    “I had no idea,” Jarvis whispered, more to himself than to Hyacinth.
    “It wasn’t for you to know,” she barked back at him. “Come.”
    She didn’t wait for us to respond before she spun us around, dragging us