by Ryan Attard
Well, when he put it like that…
“What about him?” I asked abruptly, pointing at the Necromancer.
Luke cocked his head. Then he checked his pulse. He sighed and took two steps back.
“You really did a number on him,” he said. “Brain dead. But just in case…”
Fire flew onto the Necromancer, setting him ablaze. I’d like to say I felt sorry for him, but there was no empathy. I was just pissed he wasn’t conscious enough to feel as the fire ate through his body, much like his foul magic had done with mine.
I followed Luke as he ran through some kind of underground bunker.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked. “And how the hell can you see me?”
He grinned, ducked behind cover, and launched a fresh assault, catching his friends—I mean, enemies—by surprise.
“You sure you wanna use ‘hell’ that many times?” he joked. “You might actually end up there.”
He cleared the room, setting it ablaze as he did, and just walked out of the door he blasted.
“This is one of our strongholds,” Luke answered. “Well, theirs, I suppose. And I can see you because my old man was an Ectomancer. He was pretty crap at it, but he taught me a trick or two. Some of it stuck.”
“Your tattoo,” I said. Every Black Ring Society member had a tattoo of a black ring—hence the name—that was also a curse. As soon as they started ratting out Greede, they became a crisp. “How’d you get rid of it?”
He grinned and tugged on his sleeve. A large patch of burnt skin glistened.
“Turns out turning into actual fire helps,” he said. “But I burnt it off. No flesh, no tattoo. Hurt like a son of a bitch though. I bet that makes you happy.”
He strode up to a dark corridor and tried the handle on a door.
“When did this start?” I asked.
Luke gripped the handle and focused his immense magic into his palm. Heat and fire seared through the handle, melting it and a significant portion of the door. The acrid smell of burning plastic and metal was enough to make me, a ghost, gag.
Luke pushed the door open and walked inside a room full of computers and servers lining the wall. He took out a flash drive and stuck it inside one of the consoles.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but the way Greede did things never sat well with me. There’s something not… human, about him. And, no, it’s not the demon he shares a body with. Him, the man—he’s worse than all of his monsters put together.”
“We finally agree on something,” I said.
Luke checked on the progress of the thumb drive and said nothing.
“But you still didn’t answer my question,” I pressed.
He hissed. “Jesus, are all ghosts this talkative? Fine, I switched sides last year. Greede opening another dimension right on Earth. Demons and monsters came flying out. I even saw a freaking dragon.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, grinning. “Iotharax. I wonder what he’s up to?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I rode the dragon,” I told him.
Luke cocked his head at me. Then he shook it. “Figures.”
“So you had a change of heart, did you?” I pressed.
Luke turned to fully look at me.
“Your sister grilled me enough already,” he said. “I passed every test she set out for me. In addition to that, I’ve spent the past year sabotaging Greede and these jackasses from the inside while she found a way to get your sorry ass back around. And I did my job efficiently—so well that they had no idea I was a mole. Until now. So excuse me if now I turn around and actually complete my assignment. Lives are at stake here.”
I watched as he spun and typed something into the keyboard.
“Great speech,” I said. “But you haven’t passed my test, Luke. Remember that.”
He chuckled and pulled the thumb drive out. Then he reached out to the side and channeled his magic. Flames thinned to a laser and cut through the servers. Within seconds, the wall of servers was aflame.
Luke took out his phone, an outdated flip phone, and dialed a number on speed dial.
“Mission accomplished,” he spoke. “All data mined and erased.” A pause. “I have the ghost with me… Yes, got it.” I saw his eyebrow crease. “Yes, Miss Ashendale, I have confirmed with Nekomata. All three of us are in place then. Begin the Hellgate Protocol.”
He put the phone back in his pocket.
“Nekomata?” I asked. “Hellgate Protocol? The hell are you and my sister planning?”
“You’ll see when we get there,” he said. “But we have to hurry. Greede is nearly at the Ashendale mansion.”
“And how are we getting there?” I asked. “That’s miles away.”
“I can make it in about fifteen minutes,” he replied. Slowly, he reached inside his bomber jacket and extracted a straw doll, exactly like the one Gil had trapped me inside when she had first summoned me.
I groaned.
Luke grinned. “Less, if you cooperate.”
Chapter 21
The view from Luke’s pocket was disturbing to say the least. Imagine flying at a million miles per hour while facing down, unable to close your eyes as the ground beneath you zoomed by.
I didn’t ask Luke how far we were from our destination. All I had to do was peek through Limbo. Thousands of strands of magic were clustered around one location—a location that itself was a massive nexus of magic, both holy and foul.
I knew our house had secrets, but I had never laid eyes on them in such an exposed state. I’m not just talking foul magic here. There was something nauseating, like watching cancer coming to life. Dark, deathly, and utterly horrifying.
And this coming from the guy who had spent the last year getting chased by the Grim Reaper.
But on top of that magic, in a thin layer, was a shining beacon of magic. Pure, yet still dirty. This was justice, horrible yet right. I could feel Gil’s touch: she was doing what needed to be done and all appearances be damned.
Surrounding the mansion was a massive dome of magic, but it was not my sister’s. I peered at it from the real world, and saw the forest come to life.
Trees grew limbs, but these were not the sagacious tree-folk Tolkien wrote about. These were violent sons-of-bitches that whipped and stomped the soldiers Gil sent to intercept them. These living trees came at the mansion from the rear.
At the front of the mansion, I saw Greede himself—a massive foul aura—channeling magic through the Necronomicon. I avoided looking directly at the book through Limbo. Like I said before, some things are best left unexplored.
Before him was a small cluster of manticores, lion beasts with scorpion tails, that warded off anyone dumb enough to approach the man himself.
Mephisto unleashed his powers against them, clearing the field, but Greede was still channeling his magic, and summoned something I would have never anticipated.
The creature was a cross between a zombie and an angel.
A little over a year ago, Greede had killed an angel, some poor guy named Ezekiel, by literally ripping out and eating his still-beating heart. Now, that same angel’s body was standing in front of Mephisto, but it had been clearly modified. Bolts and staples made it look like the classical Frankenstein monster. It had some kind of cannon weapon instead of its right arm, starting from the elbow down. Several quills and spikes jutted from its body. The wings were bleached white, clearly artificial. Not even real angels have wings that white—maybe Greede was mocking them. I wouldn’t put it past him.
The wings were mechanical because they unfolded and feathers sprung out, until the zombie angel had a eight-meter wingspan. Along the bone of the wings, little red dots appeared like eyeballs and began heating up.
Lasers. This guy’s wings had lasers.
Neither of that seemed to bother Mephisto. He dissolved into a gust of wind and threw himself at the zombie-angel, claws and teeth and fists. The only problem was that I could see th
e essence of angelic magic within the mutated angel.
And if there’s one thing that is specifically designed to defeat demons, it’s angels. Greede had created something tailor-made to defeat, or at least stall, Mephisto.
While the demon was locked with the zombie-angel, I saw several roiling monsters tunneling through the ground. They came from all sides. I instantly recognized them.
Wurms: giant, ugly centipedes the size of skyscrapers. And the thing with Wurms is they eat everything.
Including the barriers erected by my sister to keep intruders away.
I felt before I saw the barriers shatter. The massive Wurms erupted from the ground and slammed into the mansion itself. Age old stone, mortar that was older than the US itself, crumbled under the monsters’ weight.
Suddenly, each and every one of those monsters exploded. From within them, several bat-like creatures flocked out. Chiropteran wings flapped erratically, while their long limbs hung below them like the arms of a mosquito in flight.
Nightgaunts.
Yep, the Lovecraftian creatures, and Greede’s favourite shock troops.
The Nightgaunts were now inside the mansion grounds, ripping and killing anyone in their path.
“Hold on,” Luke said. “It’s about to get warm.”
Warm was an understatement. Even through my doll body, which theoretically should not have any tactile sense, I could feel the heat.
Luke blazed through the Nightgaunts. His fire seared through the living nightmares, leaving a trail of charred dead Nightgaunts.
A small trail.
“Shit,” I said. “Retreat. Luke, retreat. There’s too many of them.”
More flames. “I can take them.”
Nightgaunts turned their attention to the new threat and clumped together. I had seen that formation before. Monsters piled on top of one another, forming a wall.
Or rather, a rising living, monstrous tsunami of monsters that towered over Luke.
“Okay,” he squeaked. “We’re retreating.”
“Yes. Retreat. Hurry. Hurry.”
The Nightgaunts fell.
“HURRY!”
Luke rocketed towards the house just as a tsunami of flapping, screeching monsters jettisoned towards the house. The roof caved in. Stone rained on us as Luke zig-zagged through the falling stone.
Flapping wings behind us indicated they were chasing us. I caught Luke’s expression. He was afraid, and it was affecting his concentration.
The flames at his feet faltered, and we started falling.
And then, a bed of iron spikes erupted from the ground, shooting all the way towards the ceiling. Dozens of Nightgaunts screamed as they were impaled.
Machine-gun fire.
Luke turned to look at whoever had just saved our lives, allowing me to see him too.
Jack, metal Elemental and one of my apprentices, stood at the doorway, with one of his hands morphed into a machine-gun barrel.
“Over here,” he said.
Luke ran past him, and Jack joined us. I kept my eyes on him.
He was avoiding looking at me.
Granted, I was a straw doll, but he knew I was in there. And he wouldn’t look at me.
He led us into an elevator and shut the door.
“Hold on,” he said.
Suddenly, the elevator plummeted down, and a second later, Jack pressed his hands on the walls, bringing the elevator to a halt. As we went out of it, he tapped a few buttons on it.
“Self-destruct,” he said by way of an explanation. “Come on.”
The elevator shot back up, and we followed Jack inside.
I’d lived in the mansion as a kid but this underground bunker was new. Jack led us into a laboratory of sorts.
The first thing that caught my eyes was a giant vat in the middle of the room. It was plugged into several tubes which led to other tanks and consoles.
And floating in the middle of the main tank, inside some kind of neon green liquid, was I.
Yes.
Me.
My body.
I stared at it for the longest time. Jet-black skin, claws, spikes on the elbows and knees. Red eyes half-covered by my eyelids. This was the state I had died in, a state where I had been the living manifestation of my powers. I saw through Limbo the vast amounts of magic running through it.
I was a single obsidian strand, raised towards the sky until it disappeared. At the bottom, I saw the same strand furrowing deep into the ground, so deep it disappeared from sight.
“Erik.”
Gil came up to us and nodded. At Luke. She was nodding at Luke.
Luke handed her the doll—me—and with a wave of her hand, she released the binding spell.
I was free to roam next to the vat.
“I can’t go in,” I said as I tried to phase through the tank.
“That’s the Life magic leaking out,” Gil explained. “It’s what I’ve been working on.”
I turned. “Now? There’s an invasion going on upstairs. People are dying.”
“They can handle it,” she said, tapping her way along a keyboard.
“Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
“No, she’s not.”
Abi’s voice was stern and harsh. She leaned on her staff as she walked. I could see fresh bandages and plasters on her, along with several bruises.
“Abi,” I began.
She held up her hand to silence me. “Not now,” she said. “There will be time for talking later. But right now you need to leave.”
“Leave?” I echoed. “And go where?”
A gust of wind brought in Mephisto. “Hell,” he answered.
I took a good look at him. Mephisto looked in worse shape than I’d ever seen him. His clothes were in shambles, he walked with a limp, and over half his face was badly scarred.
“Mephisto's right, Erik,” Abi said. “You and Gil need to get going.” She sighed. “The way it stands right now, everyone is expendable but you three. Erik, you’re the only one who has a real shot at defeating Greede—provided you can come back to life. Gil is all that stands between order and chaos in this town. And Mephisto… Well, you need a demon guide, and he’s the only one around.”
“Callous,” Mephisto said, “but not incorrect. Master Gil, have you the Etherium Key?”
Gil nodded and walked over to a separate console. She opened a hatch, and inside I saw a small mirror-like device with four bronze spindly arms locked onto a platform designed specifically to house it.
Etherium Keys, or Dimensional Pendulums, were keys for opening portals in between dimensions in the multiverse. They worked like a recording device. You imprinted them with the energy frequency of the place you wanted to go to beforehand, and once activated you were shunted there. Then, by simply reversing the polarity, you went back home.
Gil closed the hatch and programmed something into the computer. Sigils glowed red on the ground around the vat housing my body, forming an intricate circle.
“You guys go,” Abi said. She looked at Jack and Luke. “We’ll stay and hold the fort.”
Jack looked at her, then looked away, and then opened his mouth.
“Abi, I-”
She held up her hand, cutting him off. “Don’t say anything,” she snapped. “I don’t wanna hear it. You want to atone for not being there? Start by fighting alongside me. Step up to the plate. Then, you can apologize.”
Jack nodded.
Abi looked at us, as Gil and Mephisto stepped inside the sigil. I was already there and felt magic locking us in place. The Etherium Key was already shunting us.
“Abi!” I shouted. “All of you. Stay alive. You hear me? That’s one final goddamn order. Stay live!”
Abi nodded. “Suit up,” she said.
Luke burst into flames, becoming a living Human Torch. Jack coated his entire body in grey metal. Two turrets grew from each shoulder, while his arms elongated into blades.
Abi put her mask on, and her aura flared.
The
red sigils exploded, and suddenly I was pulled back as the Etherium Key transported us towards the last place I wanted to end up.
Chapter 22
Hell.
The first thing that hit me was the humidity, the sheer oppressing heat. That actually made me chuckle. Hellfire, brimstone, devils with pitchforks and pointy tails—I never knew it was so literal.
I pushed myself off the ground and winced in pain. The gravel beneath me was volcanic rock with glowing amber and red lines running through it. I had pressed my palm against one of those lines and now had an angry welt along my hand.
My real hand.
I looked down, patting myself, and felt solidity. I was whole again. Shit, was I alive—in Hell?
A groan to my side. Gil wiped soot off her face and sat up. She looked at me, her eyes widened, and before I knew it, we were embracing each other. It felt real, solid—true.
Behind Gil stood Mephisto who was checking on the tank that still held my floating body in it. I pried Gil off me.
“How?” I asked.
Gil shrugged and turned to Mephisto.
“You are dead on Earth, Master Erik,” the demon answered. He rapped a knuckle against the tank to prove his point. “But those same rules do not apply in this realm.”
For the first time, I really took a look around me.
Grey ash and soot covered everything as far as the eye could see. Geysers erupted from the ground like giant spikes. From the very top of the funnels, steam hissed. The sky was of a similar color, dull grey and sulfuric, with the horizon a brilliant yellow. Have you ever seen one of those Discovery specials about nuclear holocausts? I think they call the aftermath a nuclear winter, where everything is burnt and dead—or in the process of dying. That’s what this place was.
“That doesn’t look good,” I heard Gil say. She was looking at the horizon too. Then she looked at the back of her hand. The milky white skin had turned red and angry. “Radiation. Humans cannot survive in this environment.”
Mephisto nodded. “No. The demon who dwells in this realm created it so. Observe.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt, revealing several red welts. “The fire is enough to affect even myself.”
