Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1)

by Matthew Herrmann

  I felt Garfunkel’s nails digging into my shirt as Armageddon sounded behind me in a rending of centuries-old stone. “It’s like that scene in Jurassic Park where they’re driving away from the T-rex in a jeep!”

  “I am not a GoneGodDamned jeep!” I spat out as teeth nipped at my shoes. “And that is not a T-rex—”

  Teeth latched onto the flap of my sewn-up jacket, yanked me back and to my feet like a stuntwoman on a wire. With a scream, I pitched myself forward as the jacket ripped all the way through. I twisted my arm through the armhole and one of the dragon heads came away with half of it, my jacket flapping like a flag in a breeze.

  “Well that was close,” Garfunkel said.

  I flung the other half of my jacket backward at Typhon rampaging through the benches as if wading through a kiddie pool. The tactic didn’t accomplish much; he was gaining too much ground on me.

  Feinting toward the amphitheater’s rim, I dove in the reverse direction, toward the bottom, hurdling stone benches and vaulting my way toward Atlas’s feet—and the lava axe.

  “You can run, but you can’t hide,” Typhon bellowed from above and behind me.

  As I descended the tiers, drawing nearer to the lava axe, I called out to my left shoulder, “Is Simon alright? I didn’t lose him?”

  After a pause, Garfunkel said, “Nah, he’s dangling behind you on his harness like a … Ken doll. Wearing a helmet. And … body armor? Theo, I didn’t know Amazon sold—”

  A swooshing sound made me crane my neck around.

  “Duck!”

  I dove as a slab of GoneGodDamned stone bench hurtled to my previous position, crumbling like tempered glass, bits skittering out like a million marbles in every direction.

  Well, that slowed me down.

  But I managed to reach the lava axe, retrieving it in a fluid dip as Typhon launched himself into the air and sank into the amphitheater’s flat base like a screaming cannonball.

  I raised the axe, amazed and heartened by the warm glow emanating from its once-frigid grasp.

  “Must be because I’m closer to the Heart,” I muttered.

  Typhon reared back and surged toward me, slinging one of his clawed arms behind his back, unleashing it at me like a slinky, which I ducked, his claws shearing right through the petrified Titan’s ankle. Swinging his other arm around low, it’d have torn me in half had I not shot up and cleared it. Instead, Atlas’s foot disappeared with a boom. I landed lightly on the balls of my feet, gripping the axe tight as I shoved it up and against Typhon’s chest.

  He grimaced as the glowing red of the axehead penetrated his chest a few inches. Then he brought a leg up and kneed me in the chest, the equivalent of getting struck by a midnight train—or so I imagine.

  With the air knocked from my lungs—and quite possibly a few cracked ribs—I rolled over onto my side as I gazed up at Typhon’s red-hot chest. A molten fissure had opened up around the axe wound; tears bubbled out from the corners of his eyes.

  He shook his clenched fists and central head in fury while the rest of his eyes locked in on me, surging with gold light.

  “Hold onto your butts,” Garfunkel said, hunkering down on my shoulder.

  Judging by the way Typhon’s body was shaking, I was pretty sure I’d just dealt the killing blow. Even still, judging by all the glowing yellow eyes, Typhon was about to annihilate me with his dying breath and there was nowhere I could run to be safe.

  Oh well, at least Angel—I mean the Jersey Devil—could be proud of me …

  A moment passed. Then another.

  I was still breathing. I cursed.

  Typhon’s multiple heads were burning time—lots of it—but not in order to rain death upon me. Instead, I watched in utter disbelief as Typhon’s chest wound slowly stitched itself shut.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” I asked to no one in particular.

  When the wound was completely sealed, Typhon opened the eyes of his main head and glowered at me. “That. Hurt.”

  “Think on the bright side of life,” I said. “It didn’t kill you.”

  Typhon stomped both monstrous feet one at a time, planting them like steel girders into the amphitheaters floor before rolling back both his shoulders, his massive body swelling yet again, towering over me at an impressive twelve feet tall.

  He delivered a blasting roar so shrill and ear-wrecking that I thought he was about to disintegrate me with some hyper-breath attack. Instead, the dragon heads projecting from his shoulders and back jerked an erratic puppeteer’s dance before tearing free from Typhon’s flesh in a really, really wet, gross sound, and hovering above Typhon like hungry wyverns with eyes only for me.

  And from the freshly torn-open wounds in his body, new heads sprouted, chomping blindly at the air, their tongues flickering in and out, no doubt acquiring my scent.

  “Oh crap, shit, poo …”

  “You know, I bet he really does have a hundred heads tucked away somewhere inside there,” Garfunkel said.

  I swallowed as all twelve feet of Typhon lumbered toward me, the shadows of his floating heads, casting snakelike, flitting shadows.

  As Typhon drew one clawed hand high above his head, I tripped over Atlas’s shorn-off pinkie toe.

  I glanced up and swallowed. “Oh GoneGodDamn …”

  “Achy Breaky Heart”

  Poised to deliver the killing blow, Typhon hesitated as the boom of the silver doors being thrown open echoed down to us. Typhon’s guards and commandos gasped, parting as padded footsteps shook the amphitheater floor.

  Typhon glared at me with his main head while the rest of his heads twisted upward.

  I blinked as the new arrival came into view.

  Leo.

  “Brother Leo?” Garfunkel said.

  I’d seen the giant lion in the InBetween—had nearly been eaten by him. So did this mean he’d recovered and broken out of the regeneration vat beneath the Arena? And followed Typhon down here?

  “You are not my master!” Leo’s words flowed into my mind as with my psychic connection to my familiars.

  The lion threw open his mouth and let loose a roar so throaty and furious, I could see the soundwaves around the burst distorting and rippling through the air toward Typhon and me.

  I spun and launched myself out of the way as the roar crashed into Typhon, turning him inward and crushing him against the floor. The roar rolled right over his downturned body like waves upon a shore, and one of Typhon’s heads exploded like a ripe tomato. What remained of Atlas’s entire leg shattered in a rubble cloud.

  “Kameno tost …”

  A sleepy yawn came from my right shoulder and I glanced over in time to see Simon dangling against my arm, a mini helmet protecting his noggin. “Theo, how come every time I wake up like this, there’s always a giant Other trying to kill us!?”

  “Quit passing out maybe?” I breathed as Typhon righted himself from the rubble pile and stumbled toward me. One of his heads whipped at me and I sidestepped and swung the lava axe. Its edge, gooey hot and magma-y cleaved through the neck like a lava axe through … butter.

  “Score!” Garfunkel shouted with a fist pump.

  Typhon recoiled; a slender shadow flitted over me.

  “Above you!” Simon shouted.

  I swung the lava axe upward and into the gullet of the detached dragon head shooting right at me. The weapon melted through the head as momentum slung it over my shoulder, splattered it against the floor and splitting it into two halves that ignited into cinders like a Chinese firecracker.

  “You’re on fire!” Garfunkel said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No, you’re literally on fire!” said Simon.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that a flap of flaming dragon head had clung to my shoulder. I performed a bizarre form of the chicken dance and knocked it off as Leo simultaneously slammed into Typhon, driving him into the amphitheater’s raised stone stage with a kapow!

  “You go, bro!” Garfunkel said with anothe
r fist-pump.

  The win was short-lived. One of Typhon’s muscular arms gripped Leo by the mane or neck fat, suspending him like a kitten before slashing the lion’s face with his free hand and tossing the constellation onto the lowest tiers of benches.

  “What am I paying you fools for?” Typhon roared. “Help me!”

  I assumed that when Angel had said to “hold on,” he’d meant for this. But if Leo got himself killed, then what? What I knew was that staying down here with a super-charged Other and an impending wave of Typhon’s goons on the way was certain death.

  I scampered up the tiers of benches alongside Atlas’s reclining petrified body as shouts and screams and gunfire filled the air.

  What the hell are Typhon’s men firing at? I thought vaguely, my breath catching in my throat as I reached the amphitheater’s rim. Others of all shapes and sizes, dirtied by years of living underground poured through the open doors and into the chamber with splitting roars and yowls. Orcs, yetis, ogres, wendigos. And leading them, Jack-O’-Lantern, his saber raised over his frightful grin.

  “We are finished hiding in the dark. This is our hour. Charge!”

  Rifles fired and the Others crashed upon the thugs like a waterfall. As men and Others fell, the silver doors were ripped completely free from their hinges by a berserking cyclops. It picked one of the doors up in both hands and began to sweep it like a broom against Typhon’s commandos.

  Behind the wave of Others a legion of Brotherhood of Zeus assassins spilled through the opening, sprinting toward and vaulting over mercenaries and Others alike as they forged their way toward the amphitheater rim.

  Don charged at the front of the line, his eyes lit by a thundering glow as he raised a fist. In a grating yet surprisingly loud voice, he shouted, “Typhon! We shall not die! You should have joined your chimera army against us when you had the chance. Now, your Arena is done! Your slave combatants are set free!”

  Hmm. I guess the Zeus gang were the good guys after all.

  Don continued. “Do not allow the enemy to take Zeus’s gift! We must claim it for ourselves!”

  Yeah … I guess all along Don had intended to nab the hidden power for himself.

  The Zeus acolytes at either side of Don locked in on Typhon glancing up at Atlas’s chest and the motherlode of creation crystals contained there.

  With a single piercing war cry, half of the Zeus gang thundered down the amphitheater behind Don while the rest of them arrayed themselves atop the rim, reaching their hands over their shoulders as if drawing arrows from quivers. Then with a grunt—and a flash of their arm tattoos—they pitched their arms forward, launching lightning bolts at Typhon as he sank his claws into Atlas’s remaining leg and began climbing toward the Titan’s Heart.

  I shielded my eyes with the lava axe as static electricity and white-hot flashes of light spiraled up and away from Typhon.

  “This is getting too crazy!” Simon shouted.

  Don was still leading the charge down the central aisle. When the electricity cloud dispersed, Typhon gritted his teeth and dropped back to the ground to face the blue-bandana’d assassins. Blackened patches spotted his back and arms and heads but a wicked smile curved over his mouth as Don closed the distance, reaching behind his shoulder and summoning a nasty-looking greenish-white lightning bolt twice the size of his body.

  But before Don could even slant forward to cast his bolt, one of Typhon’s heads chomped down on his upper half, unceremoniously separating ribcage from waist.

  Typhon spat off to the side. “Tastes old.”

  An assassin took a running leap at him. Typhon’s eyes flickered gold and he caught the acolyte easily by the throat and clenched, flesh and bones sluicing through his claws.

  “It’s so horrible!” Simon gasped, unaware of a crossbow bolt splintering against the floor beside us.

  “No, it’s Orion,” Garfunkel said.

  I turned. Striding toward me was my partner.

  “I don’t like you,” Orion breathed as he stopped a few feet away from me on the rim, his crossbow still raised, the upturned palm of Atlas’s extended arm resting beside me. I climbed up onto the palm and Orion followed suit.

  “What?” I said. “Is the lust wearing off?”

  He snarled.

  “Wrath it is,” I said.

  Orion sighted the crossbow at the center of my chest. “You think you know me so well? Well let me tell you—this is not an act. Typhon’s magic formula simply lifted the strict self-restraint and control I imposed upon myself post-GrandExodus.” He paused and I thought I detected a quiver in his hand.

  “When I woke up here in this GoneGod World,” Orion continued, “I thought it was my second chance at redemption. Ha. What a fool I was. I cared about consequences but without the gods to reward or punish us, there are no consequences—only desire and passion. Now there’s nothing to stop us from following them.” He paused, a sneer creeping over his lips. “I don’t like you, but I still want you …”

  “You don’t like me?” I asked. “Why? Because I can think clearly for myself? Because you’re clearly a bit foggy-headed.”

  When he was within punching distance, Orion tossed his crossbow to the side and drew his hunting knife. “Oh, I’m foggy-headed.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think you’re thinking with your head at all.” I raised the lava axe, still red hot, this close to Atlas’s body.

  Orion smirked. “You may not know me, but I know you. And you’d never hurt me with that weapon. You care about me too much. Hah.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, switching up my grip. “Then come on.”

  “Theo what are you doing?” Simon said.

  Orion reversed his grip on his knife so that the blade angled downward, like a talon. We danced around each other for a bit before Orion took the first swing. I sidestepped and climbed up onto the palm of Atlas’s hand.

  “You might be right. I won’t kill you,” I said as he hauled himself up and rolled to a menacing crouch in front of me. “But I can still kick your ass. Again.”

  He leapt at me with a snarl and I evaded like a matador.

  Below us, Typhon heaved himself up onto Atlas’s lap, having resumed his climbing during Orion’s and my fight. He raised a bulky arm and shuddered as a lightning bolt struck him and exploded. Growling, he sent a flying dragon head screaming toward the acolyte who had sent it.

  I whipped back around to Orion. “You’re a little slower than you used to be, pre-brainwash.”

  “I’m not brainwashed—this is who I really am! And you’re a fool if you think I’ll ever bow to you—”

  I kicked him across the jaw.

  “Bow to me?” I asked.

  Orion sneered and wiped blood from his lip. “I remember how I used to treat you. Ever the gentleman, always trying to open doors for you and attempting to stand up for your honor—”

  “That’s not called bowing down,” I said. “That’s just being a decent person.”

  “Decency is dead!” He lunged for me and I sidestepped and he bit my thigh with his knife. Grinning, he went for the follow-up but I kicked him against the side and he crumpled to his knees.

  Spinning away from Orion on Atlas’s palm, I clambered up the stone wrist, trotting along the length of forearm as I glanced down at Typhon’s progress. He had resumed his climbing and was halfway to the Heart. Zeus assassins lay sprawled upon the floor like dead bugs; they wouldn’t be claiming Zeus’s “gift.”

  Still gathered around the rim, the remaining Zeus acolytes not contending with flying dragon heads continued to hurl lightning bolts at Typhon, slowing his progress. Near the chamber’s entrance, mercenaries cowered beneath Jack-O’-Lantern’s blazing Halloween grin as well as his sword.

  “Guys,” I said to my shoulders as I stepped past Atlas’s elbow and proceeded up his upper arm. “I think we’re going to have to do something about Typhon.”

  “Us?” Simon said.

  Garfunkel slapped his forehead. “She means it
’s time to Libra up.”

  “But, but … he’s huge!” Simon said.

  “And he’s going to kill us all if we don’t stop him,” I said.

  I crested Atlas’s shoulder and reached the stone neck. If I dropped down and worked my way across the ridges of Atlas’s pecs, it wouldn’t be too far to the Heart. But even if I could beat Typhon there, what was I to do? Hack at him with the lava axe? He’d already healed his first axe wound.

  Garfunkel sucked in a breath. “Star Boy comin’ in hot behind you! And he’s burning time!”

  A glance over my shoulder showed Orion sprinting up Atlas’s arm with supernatural speed. I needed to stop Typhon but if I dropped down now, Orion would have the high ground and it wouldn’t take much to knock me to my death. I turned and searched for handholds on Atlas’s neck.

  “Why are we climbing up again?” Simon asked.

  I leapt upward right before Orion’s speeding body clapped against Atlas’s neck; he swung up at my ankle with his knife but I raised my foot and the blade struck sparks off the stone.

  Clinging to the neck, I swept down with the lava axe, its blade melting a rivulet across Atlas’s stone flesh. Orion grunted and kept his boots on Atlas’s shoulder as I climbed.

  I didn’t stop until I hoisted myself up onto Atlas’s head. Orion had already started up as well but something else had caught my eye—a thunderbird blasting through the chamber’s open doorway and swooping up and over the amphitheater with a sprinkling of thunder and lightning that vibrated my teeth.

  Suddenly it started raining. 120 feet underground. Gotta love thunderbirds …

  “Don’t you just love the smell of fresh-fallen rain,” Orion said as he clambered up onto Atlas’s head and threw back his wet hair.

  I shoved aside my own damp hair plastered around my neck and cheeks. “I wouldn’t,” I said as he prepared to attack.

  He came at me like a snake and I deflected his forearm, spun away, lashed out with a kick, hopped back a step, caught myself, slugged him across the jaw as he swatted me to the flat of Atlas’s head. I plunged a palm into a water puddle, flung the other hand out and swept it under Orion’s boot. He fell with a splash.