by Matt Turner
The radio was nothing but screams and gunfire now. They never had a chance, Salome thought in horror. Utter hate ravaged her soul, and she jerked at the controls, trying to force the stiltwalker forward, but the machine was leaking fuel and components like a dying man. It weakly stumbled toward the carnage, trailing a streak of empty casings as she blindly fired at her quarry.
“Your face.” Lao laughed.
The smoke briefly cleared, and this time Salome actually saw him, grinning at her from Leviathan’s back. The demon had its back to her, with its muzzle deep in the bowels of a truck it had half-torn apart. The men inside screamed and begged as the dragon ate them like treats from a tin can.
“LAO,” Salome screamed. She smashed her hand down on the stiltwalker’s dashboard. It was useless, she knew, but she still couldn’t help but howl in triumph as every weapon system in the machine activated. The twin miniguns roared to life, and the hidden slots on the war machine fell away, revealing the plethora of rockets built into its frame. The backlash from the sheer firepower knocked the stiltwalker back several steps. The weakened steel groaned beneath her like a drunkard about to fall—and this time it finally did collapse, just as the first rockets smashed into Leviathan’s leather hide and detonated with a force that incinerated everything within fifty meters. Both the arms and legs of the machine were torn away by the shock wave, and the cockpit rocked crazily about as it smashed down into the surface.
For a moment, Salome lay in the darkness, surrounded by the burnt-out remnants of the stiltwalker’s controls. I got him, she thought. Tears coursed down her ravaged cheeks. Leviathan.
“Your demon.” The radio, like the rest of the machine, was completely shot, but still Lao’s voice rang out to her, clear as day.
Am I going mad?
A massive chunk of half-chewed flesh spattered against the cockpit. The weakened and cracked glass briefly held against the weight, but finally shattered, allowing the vile cargo to gush inside. Salome screamed and clawed at her restraints, desperate to be free from the intestines and hands and moaning faces that threatened to drown her. “Lord Prophet…” the mushy bleeding things mumbled. More of their entrails came rushing in. She raised her hands, trying to keep them away from her face, but it was no use; within seconds, the light was blotted out by the sea of suffering that engulfed her.
“Your men.” Lao grinned. “I’ve taken them all.” He gave Leviathan one more tap, and the demon regurgitated its last mouthful of partially digested soldier onto the smoldering remains of Salome’s stiltwalker. This time, it may have been too much; he couldn’t make out her screams anymore from the bottom of the hill of charnel.
Buried alive by man-flesh. I can’t think of a better ending for you, whore.
“I thought your mistress would put up a better fight.” He laughed.
“You don’t know her,” Leviathan growled. The muscles on the devil’s back tensed. “She is strong.”
Lao raised a single finger and tapped it against the small black box in his hands. The demon tensed and let out a hiss of hot air as the electrodes buried deep in its skull let out a cruel burst of pain. ELIE may be a crazy bitch, but her creations were damned useful. He twisted one of the dials on the box to increase the voltage. Leviathan moaned and snapped at the air like a rabid dog.
Electro-shock therapy, ELIE had said. An old, but still useful, means of instilling obedience.
“You used to live in Heaven, right?” Lao mused. “They say that God can read the future like a book—nothing ever surprises Him. Does it work the same for His greatest creations, I wonder? Did you ever think you would fall this low? From angel to devil to pet.” He eased up on the dial and Leviathan let out a sigh of relief. “No, not even that—you’re just a slave.”
Leviathan let out a low growl that made the very sand vibrate.
“Shut up.” Lao rolled his eyes and pointed at the half-buried stiltwalker. “Now—” He was just about to order the devil to cook Salome alive when something made the hill of bodies shift and tremble.
“Get… away…” Salome’s voice was so garbled with hate and the hissing electrical feedback of the failing stiltwalker that her voice sounded more like a demon’s than a woman’s.
In spite of everything, a cold finger of fear rushed down Lao’s spine.
“Burn her,” he snapped. “Now!” When Leviathan did not comply, he mashed down the button, sending a surge of electricity directly into the demon’s synapses. The dragon-devil opened his mouth wide in fury, about to unleash a tidal wave of inferno on the buried machine.
“…From MY DEVIL!” Salome finished.
An explosion made the very ground shake as the hill of bodies burst outward in a shower of flaming flesh, and suddenly the stiltwalker tore itself out of the ground. Pieces of its fiery metal frame fell away like snakeskin, and Lao had just enough time to realize that she must have detonated one of her rockets at point-blank range to free herself. He caught a glimpse of hateful eyes amid the burnt, smoking charnel of the machine’s cockpit and very nearly shit himself.
The stiltwalker’s sole minigun blared a burst of rounds directly at him. They bounced and ricocheted off the prosthetics that ELIE had built into Leviathan’s body, but a few went through the devil’s leathery skin. Leviathan’s burst of fire went wide, leaving behind a trail of splintered glass on the sand that the stiltwalker stormed through.
“UP,” Lao screamed at Leviathan. Fighting down at her level had been a mistake; he would destroy her from the skies instead, but the damned devil was moving too slow. He mashed the button furiously, goading Leviathan on with a torrent of pain, and at last the demon opened its wings—
One of the stiltwalker’s claws reached out and crashed into Leviathan’s starboard wing, pinning the devil to the ground. It instinctively lashed out with its tail, nearly bucking Lao off its back. He let out a scream of triumph when Leviathan’s bladed muscles neatly tore away half of the machine’s cockpit. The roar of the stiltwalker’s dying engine grew even louder as the war machine hemorrhaged oil and black smoke. Lao could just barely see Salome, frantically attempting to control the dying beast, as the scores of flames that covered the stiltwalker coursed into the cabin.
“It’s over,” he screamed at her. “It’s over, you bitch!”
One of the flaps fell away, revealing the single rocket that the stiltwalker possessed. The machine staggered backward, on its very last legs, as Leviathan managed to rip his wing free. Lao tensed, waiting for Salome to fire off her last possible weapon—but for some reason, she seemed to be hesitating at the controls.
Of course, he realized.
“That’s a Hellfire missile.” He grinned. “If you hit me with that, you’ll make me hurt, all right…but you’ll also kill your devil.”
The stiltwalker collapsed to its knees. Lao doubted the dead machine had enough power to even fire the rocket anyway, but he still continued to taunt Salome. Part of the bandages on her face had fallen away, allowing him to see just how hideous she truly was. It delighted him.
“So what’s it going to be, lover?” He laughed, and waved the remote control at her merrily. “Revenge against me, or saving your devil?”
“Kill him,” Leviathan spat. “Forget me. Just make the little human SUFFER—”
Lao shut him up with another burst of electricity. This time he twisted the dial as far as it would go, and held down on the button. Leviathan let out a shriek as blood began to pour from its eyes and muzzle. “Love or hate, Salome? Rage or—”
The stiltwalker slowly began to cave in on itself. And to his immense surprise, Lao saw Salome press a single button on the dying control panel.
She actually did it, he had time to think, just before the Hellfire rocket ignited and blasted toward him. He instinctively raised his hand to ward it off, but before the sensation of his arm being destroyed by the sheer brunt of the missile fully reached him, he found that he was soaring through the air, a sensation of immense pressure in his guts as the wi
nd tore at his hair. His eyes flickered downward, just in time to see the Kingdom’s emblem on the steel frame that protruded from his stomach. Thirty meters below, the burning carcasses of the tanks he had destroyed glimmered like children’s toys in the blood-soaked sand.
The Master will save me, he thought. No, it can’t end like this. The Master—
High above the burning sands, the rocket finally detonated. A small lake of Hellfire enveloped Lao in a hellish embrace as it splashed down against the ground. The parts of him that it didn’t incinerate, it melted. Within seconds, every protein in his body was denatured, and his cells were rendered apart on the molecular level. As soon as they tried to worm back together, the Hellfire was there to bath them anew in its unending inferno.
But this was Hell; there was no possibility of a true death. And so, through it all, Lao’s consciousness remained. He wished it didn’t.
Leviathan reached the tip of his muzzle into the smoldering remnants of the stiltwalker, wrapped his razor-sharp teeth around Salome’s torso, and gently placed her onto the sand. She took a few moments to cough and hack up a stomach filled with blood and bile. A violent tremor seized her hand, so powerful that it made the muscles tear against her bones. She had gone so long without Zaqqum…but there were only two single vials left. Have to make it last. Have to make it last.
“Did I get him?” she asked. Pure exhaustion tore at her limbs; it was all she could do to even speak.
Leviathan eyed the pool of bubbling, hissing fire. A high-pitched keening seemed to sound over the crackling flames, though whether it was the wind or Lao’s hideous soul, the demon did not know. Even at this distance, the heat from it was nearly intolerable to the devil.
“He’s gone,” the devil growled.
Salome looked up and stared in horror at the steel-clad plates built into the devil’s skin, the mass of tubing that protruded from his skull, and worst of all… She reached out and brushed her hand against the prosthetic wing. It felt cold and foreign to her touch, nothing like the majestic beauty that Leviathan had had before. “What did they do to you?” she whispered.
The demon turned to survey her. One of his eyes was gone, replaced by a socket of metal that whirred and continuously adjusted its blood-red lens. “What did they do to you?” he asked gently.
Salome touched her face and realized that part of her bandages had fallen away. She caught a bare glimpse of herself in the dull reflection of Leviathan’s new wing and forced herself not to recoil. “We’re a couple of monsters now, aren’t we?” She sighed. A deep sadness came over her, and she had to force away a sob.
Leviathan gently pressed his muzzle against her side. The warmth of his breath—which could be hot enough to incinerate entire armies—felt good, and she wrapped her arms around his snout, ignoring the bloodstains plastered against it. For a few seconds, they remained like that, human and devil, taking an odd sort of comfort in each other.
“Sorry I had to shoot you,” Salome at last whispered.
Leviathan breathed out a blast of hot air that slightly singed her curly hair. “You can apologize by serving me Cain’s head on a platter,” he grunted.
“It would be my pleasure.” She began to clamber up onto Leviathan’s back. Much of the smoke had cleared away, and she took in a deep breath of the cool Hell air. For the first time in a very long time, it seemed to her that things could finally go right for a change. The thought vanished as soon as another one of the Zaqqum-induced tremors seized her body. She would have fallen off Leviathan if the demon hadn’t shifted his weight to further support her.
He eyed her balefully. “You should’ve quit.”
“Shut up,” Salome muttered. “It’s not that big a—argh.” The pain was slowly creeping in on her from all sides. She pulled out one of her two remaining syringes and stared down at it. Shit.
But she had no choice. She slid the needle into the flesh of her arm and sighed as the painkiller slammed into her body, briefly wiping away all of her worries. One. Now I only have one.
“I don’t have much time, Leviathan,” she said soberly. “We need to be quick.”
Leviathan grunted and extended his wings to fly away.
“Wait,” she added. “There’s just one more thing…” Salome pointed at an overturned truck and the precious cargo that it had held. The Xipe Totec. It’s a miracle it didn’t go off.
Leviathan eyed the massive nuclear bomb in dismay. “Impossible. I cannot carry that all the way to the Phlegethon in time.”
It’s our only chance. The tectonic defenses of the First Blockade just might be effective against the Master’s army, but Salome was certain the only chance they possibly had against Cain himself was the most powerful weapon ever built by human hands. But if I can’t get it there in time… If only she had one of the Kingdom’s spare rocket-planes or zeppelins lying around… She scoured the horizon, desperately hoping for some sort of aid. I’m sorry I killed that holy man, she thought. Please, let me make it right. Help me, just this once.
“Are you praying?” Leviathan’s hide shook with a belly laugh.
“Not to you, lizard-ass,” Salome grumbled. “Just—”
Her words stopped, for just on the edge of the horizon, she saw a familiar column of smoke tracing into the sky. The Eighteenth Legion. She let out a sigh of pure relief.
37
Signy had thought she had known pain.
She hadn’t known a damned thing.
The demon entered her through every pore and orifice, wriggling in thousands of worm-like appendages that twisted and squirmed throughout her body. Her eyes were tightly shut, but she still felt the bed creak as the monstrous abomination shifted its weight onto her, encasing her body in a tight vise. There was nothing but her and the thing that she had once foolishly mistaken for a child—Signy Crecy was little more than a few pieces of muscle and bone, slowly squeezed from inside and outside by the thing that hissed and gibbered in excitement.
Leave me alone, she begged. Tears welled up from her eyelids; a handful of worms briefly emerged from her nostril to lap them up. For the love of the gods, just leave me alone.
“You little fool.” Acceptance’s entire body shook and quivered as the demon chuckled. A thousand sharp pins stabbed into Signy’s limbs as a fresh layer of tiny mouths began to chew their way through the sweat glands of her skin. “You want me to just leave you humans alone?” Its grip suddenly tightened. Signy would have screamed, but her throat was completely clogged by the mass that continued to pour inside. “I am no harpy, sulking in the shadows. No, you humans… I can feel you in every pore. I can smell your stench across all Hell. Ruining it, infecting it. Even before the Second Rebellion, I never believed in torturing you creatures. Cut out your tongues, burn your skin—but there are still those nasty little thoughts, TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, always SCREAMING from your filthy little minds! Leviathan and Abaddon and Belial and the others loved it, but not me. NEVER me!”
“Here comes the best part,” Sisera cheerfully cut in.
“Only one solution for vermin,” Acceptance’s voice grew deeper and more frantic as it continued to rant and rave. “Fixing them myself. And when God finally wrenches the heavenly throne from the Tyrant, I will fix all of the vermin. Every. Last. One.”
Signy’s guts gave a violent lurch as the first worms finally made their way down to the esophagus and came to the border of her stomach. She could feel them hiss and recoil from the burning acid that her stomach contained. They diverted their attention outward, beginning to chew through the esophageal lining to the blood vessels beyond. On the other side, dozens more of their brethren waited.
“You took my other children away from me,” Acceptance spat. “Weaklings, all of them. Nothing more than failed experiments. But you, Signy Crecy… I will remake you into my own image.” A single worm traced its way across her scalp, neatly parting her hair. “Daughter.”
No.
The tiny, pathetic voice in Signy’s head seemed to amuse the
demon. My worms will remold your cranial tissue, it said, but this time it wasn’t speaking out loud—the chilling words seemed to arise de novo in Signy’s consciousness. It rifled through her memories and again brought up James’s face.
Forget him. Acceptance laughed. You’ll never see him ever again. Rip went James’s smile, torn completely asunder. I am your family now.
“Id…” It was nearly impossible to breathe, let alone speak, through the squirming demon-flesh that choked her, but Signy did her damnedest.
“Ssshh,” Acceptance whispered. “Don’t fight. Everything will be all right. I will make you strong.”
“She’s a tough one,” Sisera noted. “Hurry up and finish her.”
For all of its powers, the abomination that covered her—was inside her—that, for all intents and purposes, was her—had missed one very important detail about Signy Crecy. With all her might, Signy dredged up a single memory, hidden beneath centuries of fury and violence. In spite of all the years she had wasted trying to deny it, it came to her in horrible clarity, and for a moment the demon was not the most horrifying thing she experienced.
The funeral of James Crecy. And all around, the bodies. His cousin, pierced by a half-dozen arrows. The guards and clergymen, heaped in a pool of blood. The servants who had gotten in her way, scattered in various positions, the fear still frozen on their faces. Just before the altar was Edmund Crecy himself. She had emptied an entire quiver into his body and nearly torn his head clean off with a few choice bites. And off to the side, almost hidden behind the altar, a child’s shaking hand slowly emerged from the shadows. Good Christ, she had thought she had aimed her shots, but in the pandemonium she must have hit her own—
“What is this?” Acceptance demanded. A trace of uncertainty seemed to creep into its voice. “What sort of monster are you?”
“…iot,” Signy managed to rasp out.
