Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  The grenade exploded just before Legion could soak up the brunt of the explosion with their body. There was a rumble and a crash of debris and dust as the ceiling, weakened by the earthquakes wrought by Legion’s thrashing body, finally collapsed. Vera let out a panicked cry and squeezed her eyes shut as rubble poured down, but Seth’s agility was incredible; not so much as a pebble touched her head as the world crashed down.

  She opened her eyes a moment later to see that the four of them—Seth, Simon, Amaury, and herself—were somehow still standing in the demolished rubble of the tunnel. A gaping hole had opened up in the ceiling above them, through which the distant sounds of some thunderous battle could be heard. Seth gently laid her down on the ground and took a step back.

  “Whew.” Amaury chuckled as he collapsed to the floor and laid against a rock. “Hell of a workout.” His pale face was soaked in sweat, but his familiar crazed smile had once again returned.

  With one hand, Simon picked up the great sword that he had been holding and pointed it directly at Seth. “Vera, who’s your friend?” he asked in a dangerous voice.

  Amaury glanced over and immediately stiffened in fear. “It’s y-you,” he stammered out.

  “My name is Seth.” Seth raised both his hands before him in a conciliatory gesture. “I have been sent as an emissary from Paradise to prevent the Fourth Rebellion.”

  “Seth?” The fear in Amaury’s voice immediately evaporated away as his eyes narrowed. “You look just like your older brother. Just like him. Manto, is he telling the truth?”

  “He is,” Manto’s voice confirmed.

  “I know what Cain is like.” Seth sighed. “And I am not my brother.”

  “You don’t know a thing about him.” Amaury laughed. “Not until you meet him in person, angel-boy. You don’t know a damned thing.”

  In the city above them, there was a great roar of rage that made the walls about them shake.

  Simon glanced up through the hole above them and gasped in surprise. “Is that a dragon?” he asked in awe.

  “We don’t have any more time,” Seth said urgently. “If that thing continues to grow, then all Hell will be consumed at this rate. I need your help, Horsemen.”

  “Our help?” Amaury sneered. “Since when has anyone in Heaven given a damn about what happens to us here down in Hell? Maybe you should just call in an army of angels to swoop in and clean up the place, Seth. Beat up some demons, save some of us poor little damned so that you can ease your precious conscience, then throw us back into our cells for all eternity when you’re done—that sounds just like something you Heaven-types love, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s not like that,” Seth said quietly. “There are rules I must follow. My power is limited. I cannot do this alone.”

  “It’s not just Hell that Legion is threatening, is it?” Vera realized. The connection that she had established to Seth’s mind was mostly severed, but enough remained so that she had a vague impression of his thoughts.

  “No. The monster’s power will outstrip even Cain’s, at this rate.” Seth turned away from them and began to clamber up the rubble that led to the outside world. “Fight with me, Horsemen, or Hell and Earth will both pay the price.”

  The three of them stared at one another as Seth climbed up into the light, trying to make up their minds. He sighed and added over his shoulder: “If nothing else, think of yourselves. When Legion is done with Dis, they’ll come for you.”

  That was all the motivation that they needed. “Maybe you know us better than I thought, Seth,” Vera said jokingly as she climbed up after him. She couldn’t help but take a peek at his muscular calves as he made his way onto the street above. “Nice legs, by the way.”

  “Vera, please,” he said. She was surprised to hear the hurt in his voice. “You have wounded me more than you know. I would appreciate it if we both keep our minds on the mission.”

  He finally got onto the street and turned to offer her his hand. As their palms touched, she immediately sensed the storm of pain within his soul. All of it radiated from an image that he had of her—an idealized version of Vera Figner, brimming with warmth and compassion. Vera was self-aware enough to know that was as far from her true self as you could possibly get.

  I broke his heart, she realized in amazement.

  Vera cleared her throat awkwardly. “Seth, I—”

  “Legion!” a mighty voice boomed. “This city is MINE!”

  She turned to see an avalanche of steel and brick crumble down into the street just opposite them as a giant stampeded through a block of buildings with the speed of a locomotive. An entire flat crumbled and disintegrated like wet paper under the sheer power of the massive figure’s charge. Something else—sweet Jesus, was that an arm?—exploded from the ground and tried to wrap around the giant, but one stomp of its mighty feet reduced the appendage to a bloody pulp. An angry shriek rattled through the streets of the panicked city.

  “Dear God.” Simon gawked in amazement as he clambered out onto the street. “What is that?”

  Seth pointed a finger up into the sky. Vera followed the motion and saw the outline of a massive creature among the layer of smoke and fog. The outstretched wings, the mighty tail—Simon was right, she thought. A dragon! It swooped down low over the city, allowing her to see the dark-red plating that protected its body, and the fiery gleam of its eyes. A burst of flame shot from its mouth, roasting an entire street. Almost immediately, the stench of burning flesh became overwhelming as another shriek rang out.

  “The demon Leviathan, bound to Salome the Prophet,” Seth explained. “They are out of our reach. Beware of them at all costs, Horsemen.”

  He pointed in the direction that the giant had run. For a moment, it was obscured by a particularly tall building, but then a tendril of flesh whipped into the side of the structure, carving out a path of rubble and broken glass. The upper half of the skyscraper, gushing out debris and screaming people, smashed into the ground with a mighty THUD that shook the ground for kilometers around. A cloud of smoke and dust billowed up around it, but they were just able to see through it to make out the outline of the giant.

  “The demon Abaddon, bound to Giles the Prophet,” Seth said. “Giles is hidden behind a nigh-impregnable armor of locusts. Vera, you will need to use indirect methods to take it down.” His normally gentle eyes locked with hers and became steeled with conviction. “I’m counting on you.”

  The loose rubble and debris scattered about on their deserted street began to tremble and shake as something the size of a behemoth shifted and moved. This time Seth did not have to point—the three of them turned to see a great column of flesh, fed by hundreds of tendrils, emerge in the city before them. It was so large that only the palace of Pandemonium stood larger than it—as if angry at the building that dared stand taller, the column extended a dripping arm and tore the upper half of the tower away.

  As they watched, the column rearranged itself. The hundreds of tendrils molded and shifted, combining with each other to form a dozen enormous insect-like legs, each of which could wipe away an entire army with little more than a flick. The central torso curved in on itself, forming a vaguely spherical shape. A single hole opened up in the center of it—a great cavernous maw, that stretched out wider and wider. Teeth the size of buildings tore out of the mouth’s gums, and an enormous tongue, disgustingly human despite its vast size, emerged from the dripping mouth.

  “It’s a spider,” Vera said dumbly.

  “Legion,” Seth whispered. “I had no idea they were so powerful.”

  “DEVILSSS, ANGELSSS, AND MEN!” the central mouth screamed. The very air shook with the strength of the titanic voice. “WE SSSHALL HAVE YOU ALL!”

  “We’re supposed to fight that?” Simon gulped. “I’d rather have the dragon.”

  “You both called yourselves soldiers of God, de Montforts,” Seth said. “In truth, you were both nothing but cruel, selfish men who only served themselves in life, not Him. But maybe you ca
n be of use in death. Come with me.”

  He extended his hand into the air; a sword of fire suddenly appeared in its grasp, briefly dazzling Vera and the others with the sheer brilliance of the flames. “Let us be soldiers together, Horsemen of Hell!”

  27

  Legion raised one of their feet—human-shaped, despite the spider-like limb it was attached to—and swiped aside an entire flat of buildings that a band of soldiers had taken refuge in.

  “Come, assssemble for the great sssupper of God!” The mouth next to Lao laughed merrily. He groaned in disgust as it sprayed warm spittle over his face. “The flesssh of kingsss—the flesssh of commandersss—the flesssh of mighty men—the flesssh of all men!” Legion punctuated each phrase with even more destruction upon the helpless city below—and with each attack, they cooed with pleasure and slightly swelled in size as the mouths and limbs that coated nearly every inch of their body easily plucked hundreds from the destruction and fires below.

  At this rate, they’ll eat all Hell, Lao thought in horror. To make things even worse, there was nothing he could possibly do. Even the ace in the hole that he carried in his bag was no longer enough to contain the sheer power of Legion. His only hope lay in those he had just betrayed—the Prophets.

  But the fight did not seem to be going in the Prophets’ favor. Leviathan swooped down, his fifty-meter wings extended as he opened his jaws wide and spewed out a column of flame onto one of Legion’s outstretched legs. The demon was massive, but nothing compared to the sheer size of the spider it faced. Lao had a brief glimpse of Salome’s curly hair twisting in the wind as Legion angrily bent its burning arm backward to try to grab at the devil. The Prophet just barely avoided Legion’s swipe, and flew her devil back into the clouds.

  “RUN, LITTLE FLY,” Legion screeched as they leaned back and reached four of their legs up into the sky after the climbing demon. The tips of Legion’s toes twisted and elongated outward into dozens of long tendrils that reached like wriggling fingers for the Prophet.

  Lao’s heart sunk as one of the tendrils brushed against one of Leviathan’s wings. It’s over.

  Both he and Legion suddenly rocked forward as a great weight shook the monster. Lao glanced down and saw that the armored form of Abaddon had slammed itself against one of Legion’s hind legs, knocking them off-balance. There’s still a chance, he thought in relief as Abaddon raised an armored fist and slammed it into the narrowest part of Legion’s limb. Muscle and sinew tore apart like rotten fruit from the power of the blow, and Legion let out a shriek of pain as thirty meters of their leg fell away onto the ground. As if to add insult to injury, the gunners on the Titan fired down, raining a volley of artillery shells from the airship that tore great red streaks and craters of bleeding flesh into Legion’s body.

  Hope rose in Lao’s heart as Legion released a great roar of pain from their massive central mouth…and then it immediately died as the mouth beside him began to chuckle.

  “We have eyesss everywhere,” it whispered in his ear. To prove its point, it stuck out its tongue at him, revealing the brown-eyed pupil at the tip of it. “No sssneaking up on usss.”

  And then Legion sprang their trap. A hundred tendrils of flesh exploded from underneath the street around Abaddon’s giant form, wrapping around the armored body that Giles had built in a sadistic embrace. “We have you now!” Legion cried out in triumph. They wrenched the struggling demon up into the air, revealing the underground limb—connected to the underside of one of their feet—that they had left buried underground.

  “RELEASE ME,” the armored giant bellowed as Legion lifted it higher and higher into the air. In response, Legion wrapped even more coils of flesh around the giant, eliciting a very human scream of pain as they tightened their grip even more. A cloud of dead locusts trickled down to the ground as Legion viciously twisted.

  “Gilesss, Gilesss, Gilesss,” Legion whispered as they brought the struggling figure close to their central mouth. Lao thought he could just barely make out the outline of the Prophet, buried underneath the layers of locust-armor and folds of flesh. “You don’t know how long we’ve waited for thisss.” Both of the armored giant’s legs fell away from the sheer power of the grip.

  “Legion, you damned idiot,” Giles snarled through the voice of ten thousand locusts. “Why?”

  Legion brought Giles close enough to their central torso so that the Prophet could stare at the hundreds of eyes bubbling out of their skin. “Becaussse we want to hear you ssscream.” They laughed. “Sssometimesss it improvesss the tassste.” Legion gave a final violent twist and the rest of Giles’s locust-armor tumbled away. The folds of flesh gently parted to reveal the grim Prophet laying among them.

  “All that power, and you’re ssstill nothing without usss,” Legion mocked. They opened their gaping mouth wide, prepared to swallow the Prophet whole.

  Giles frowned. “You’ve always disgusted me.” With that, he slammed the palms of his hands together. Far below, the pieces of his locust-armor that had tumbled away suddenly dissolved—into a cloud of blinding locusts that rushed upward with furious speed, each aimed for a single eye.

  “What—” Legion let out a bloodcurdling shriek as the swarm completely enveloped its torso. Even Lao screamed as thousands of hissing, bloodthirsty insects swarmed across Legion, violently biting and chewing and clawing at every inch of exposed flesh. Too late, Legion tried to crush Giles in their grip, but the Prophet had already leapt away. Before he fell even ten meters, Leviathan swooped in and easily scooped him out of the air.

  “NO!” Legion screamed. They had countless more eyes arrayed across their limbs, but perhaps the pain of being blinded a thousand times over distracted them, for Leviathan easily dodged their clumsy swipe and enveloped another one of their legs in fire for good measure. “No!” Legion shrieked again. Instead of hanging on to the burning leg, one of their other appendages seized it by the joint and violently tore it away from its body. An ocean of blood and charnel gushed onto the city streets below.

  “Help!” Lao screamed as a locust landed on his face. Its wicked pincers slashed across his face as the insect scurried toward his eyes. There was nothing he could do but shriek in horrible anticipation as the vermin came closer and closer—

  A human arm burst like a newborn out of the flesh beside Lao and seized the locust in a powerful grip. The insect screamed and exploded into pulp as the arm’s fist tightened—and all across Legion’s torso, the same scene played out thousands of times over as they grew a thick layer of thrashing limbs and tendrils of flesh to destroy the locust infestation. Within seconds, the nearly innumerable swarm was ground down to nothing but blood and pulp. Lao nearly wept in relief.

  A trickle of bright-red blood dripped between several of the arms and landed on Lao’s scalp. As he groaned in disgust, the mouth beside him opened, allowing one of the arms to cram a fistful of locust inside.

  “Now,” Legion snarled as they chewed on the armor-like shells of the squirming insects, “we are getting irritated.”

  “Oh God.” Lao moaned. “For the love of sin, just eat me already or put me down, please.”

  “Why?” They chuckled. “The main courssse isss only jussst beginning!”

  28

  John was lost—utterly, utterly lost—within the underground maze. He let out a curse of irritation as he rounded a corner and found another hallway that had been blocked off with crushed bodies and rubble. To make matters worse, the entire city seemed to be in the throes of an earthquake; with every step, he sensed that the walls around him were growing weaker and weaker. Only a matter of time until I’m buried alive.

  The only light in the darkness (and only in a metaphorical sense, for the torch that he had wrenched off the wall was beginning to die) that he had was that the offshoots of flesh that had been reaching for him had stopped their chase and retreated some time before. He had no idea what that meant, but it was nice to not be frantically running for his life for once.

  “Tre
e-man is lost,” Podarge said disapprovingly.

  “Then do you know the way out of here, devil?” John snapped in irritation.

  The harpy ruffled her dark wings. “Up.”

  He silently sighed. What did I expect, asking a deformed Hell-parrot for advice? But now that he was looking at the cracked ceiling, an idea did come to him. Maybe up isn’t such a bad idea after all. He raised one of his hands and allowed a single vine to emerge from it to the brickwork above. Podarge did not so much as blink as John’s vine grew a dozen offshoots and began to pry apart the ceiling; he supposed that the demon was used to far stranger sights.

  It took several minutes of carefully worming his vines and branches into the ground while simultaneously keeping the underground tunnel from completely collapsing on him, but John eventually felt a warm breeze brush against the very tip of one of the stalks. At last, he breathed in relief as he raised his other hand and continued to pry the crevice open. All that remained was to find the other Horsemen, get out of Dis, and after that…well, he’d take it one step at a time, he supposed.

  Eventually he carved out a rough tunnel above himself that looked just large enough that he’d be able to squeeze through. Much to his relief, he did not have to climb—by retracting his vines and branches, he found that the vegetation he had embedded into the ground was enough to lift him up.

  “Finally.” He sighed as the vines gently pulled him up through the tunnel to the dim light above. The top of his head crested over the small crevice that he had carved, and he found that he was on the bottom floor of a dimly lit building. A library? he wondered when he saw the stacks of papers and books scattered about. “Things are looking up.”

  “OPENFIRENOWGODDAMNIT,” a voice suddenly shrieked, and John nearly screamed out in panic as a soldier in the apparel of the Kingdom rushed past him, machine gun in hand. But the soldier did not notice the Horseman peeking up through the floor at him; instead, he rushed to the opposite wall, skidded to a halt underneath a large stained-glass window, and blasted his weapon out into the street. At least twenty others rushed from the shadows to join him, hoisting a variety of firearms that they frantically fired at an unseen outside menace. Shards of glass sprayed everywhere as shells rained down on the floor in an avalanche of sound and fury.