Happy End of the World (Demon-Hearted Book 3)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  Suddenly, I felt a hand gripping my shoulder tightly.

  It was Kubo, and he was now staring up at me from the platform, head wreathed in a thin trail of his blood. “It's done!” he spat.

  For a moment, no one spoke. The air became still and the mass of men on the field stopped where they were.

  And so did the Manticore. Trembling on its four limbs as though being forced to the ground by an invisible weight, the beast struggled to remain upright. Raising a single paw, it sought to continue towards us, but promptly lost its balance and slammed into the dirt on its belly. And this time, it didn't get back up.

  Kubo laughed, staring up at the grey sky and wiping at his nose. Turning his head and staring at the beast, he sported a wide grin. “Well, what's the matter? Why are you just sitting there?”

  Gradually, the Manticore grew still. Pressed on all sides by a crushing force, it fell into a tightly-packed ball that made it almost look like a sleeping kitten, its tail wrapped around the front of its body and then stiffening like stone. This was the power of the Binding of Hekatonkheir, the legendary spell that the Titans had devised to take on a trio of hundred-armed giants.

  The Manticore, fearsome though it was, couldn't stand up to the might of this spell.

  The wind ceased to blow, as though it had somehow been locked up along with the creature, and for a long while the assembled men stood and watched. The far-off droning of our Black Hawks didn't even register.

  Helping Kubo sit upright, I knelt down on the platform and sighed. “Holy shit, Chief. For a minute there, I thought you were a goner.”

  The Chief socked me playfully in the chest. “Don't go getting soft on me, Lucy. There's still a job to be done, after all.”

  The Manticore needed killed. Locking it down was well and good, but no one was going to rest until it was well and truly dead.

  More than that, killing it and gathering up some of its blood was the only way for me to save Joe.

  I stood up, leaning on my sword, and then started towards the beast. “This thing isn't going anywhere ever again, is it?” I asked.

  Kubo shook his head. “No, it's bound for good.” He wicked some blood from his nostrils and sat down on the edge of the platform. “We're going to have to think of some way to target its heart. That's the only way we can be sure to kill it.”

  “Oh, don't worry about that,” I assured him. “I can think of lots of ways we might do it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  40

  “What if we just lit its ass up, huh?” asked Germaine, pacing around the frozen Manticore. Since it'd been locked down by the binding spell, he was feeling a good deal more courageous around it. “You know, burn it completely. That'd take care of its heart, too, right?”

  After taking some minutes to recover, Kubo now felt well enough to limp about the battlefield. “No, the lore is pretty specific. The heart needs pierced.” He shambled up to the creature and looked it up and down. “Trouble is, the heart could be just about anywhere. Remember? The Manticore is able to shift its heart around its body in order to avoid a killing blow. That's why no one managed to kill it earlier, despite numerous good hits.”

  Malcolm was whipped. The old man sat upon the ground, elephant gun sitting before him. His shaky hands brought a cigarette to his lips. “Now that it's been bound there's no telling if it can still move its heart around like that.”

  “We should just wound it. Because it's been bound it may not even heal. That would be a good test,” offered Percy. “If it can still heal its wounds, then it's a good bet that it can also move its heart around despite the spell.”

  All of this back and forth was pissing me off. Pacing around the platform with my sword in hand, I poked Gadreel and asked him what he thought about this whole mess. OK, you were right. You had the muscle to dance with this thing. Bravo. But now we've gotta kill it. Job won't be done until we skewer this bastard's heart. Got me? Any... ideas?

  Rather than whispering a reply in my ear, the demon simply took over. “Move aside,” he told the others, walking up to the Manticore. Appraising the beast for a short while, Gadreel raised the lightning blade and pressed it to the creature's snout. “This is a simple matter,” began the demon. “It can't move around. It can't dodge. It's a sitting duck. Blowing its heart into smithereens is easy now that it's been bound. Watch.”

  The others stood by, watching in horror as I drove my sword into the Manticore's skull. Closing my eyes, Gadreel's grip on the blade never loosened.

  “I don't know what you're planning, but just stabbing it that way isn't going to do much,” said Kubo. He frowned, noting the change in my demeanor. “What do you think you're doing, demon?”

  From the background, I tried to get a feel for what Gadreel was up to. Hey, what exactly are you doing? We need to destroy the monster's heart, not just stab it in the face. If it were that easy we'd have killed it by now, I thought.

  Gadreel's only reply? “Shut up.”

  With my eyes closed, my hand locked around the blade and Gadreel's power amping up my senses, I began to notice something. A steady pounding in my ears. At first, I thought it was my heart, but the longer I stood there, the less sure of that I became.

  “Do you hear that?” asked the demon.

  Sure do.

  “I've found it.”

  I opened my eyes and gasped. I felt like I hadn't breathed in ages, like my lungs were on the verge of shriveling. Holding onto the hilt of my sword, I could still perceive a faint pulsing coming from inside the beast. I focused on it, let the beating tease my fingertips for a time, and then looked to the Chief.

  “What is it, Lucy?” he asked.

  Raising my free hand into the air, the demon in me provoked a grin. “In performing this binding spell, your body acted as a conduit, sorcerer. Now, in order to dispatch the beast once and for all, I will do the same. Watch closely.” The clouds began to roil and pop, and several bright flashes lit up the field.

  Gadreel called down lightning.

  His target wasn't the Manticore, however. Not directly, anyhow.

  His target was my body.

  A bolt of blinding electricity crashed into me. To my surprise, it didn't hurt. The instant the lightning struck me I felt my body quickly filled with it, storing up the charge like a battery. Then, gripping the hilt, I focused once again on the pounding of the Manticore's heart.

  I was close. I could hear it, could feel it in my palm.

  Clear your head, I thought. Push away your thoughts to make room for the beating. Like I'd done so many times in Tibet, I quieted my mind and focused on one thing and one thing only.

  The lub-dub.

  Lub-dub.

  Standing before the creature, breathing deeply, I felt like I could almost see the massive organ in my mind's eye. The red, corded muscle was tensing and contracting. Lub-dub. Right before my very eyes. If I reached out just a little further, I almost fancied I could touch it.

  “There it is,” said Gadreel in my ear. “Now, do it!”

  I opened my eyes and released the pent-up energy. Emptying my electrical reserves, the current sped through the sword and into the Manticore's body at blinding speed. The voltage coursed through the creature's blood stream, through its bones, jumped across its neuronal pathways, before crowding in on the heart.

  The smell of burning flesh preceded the explosion by a few seconds.

  In my mind, I saw the heart blackened, burnt by the charge I'd sent through it.

  The sight captured by my proper eyes, however, was a good deal more violent. The Manticore swelled up like a beached whale caught in the hot summer sun, and its body quickly erupted into a mess of blood and charred tissue. The field was coated in red rain and everyone in the vicinity hit the deck.

  Well, except for poor Kubo. He got a face-full of Manticore blood.

  It was done. The beast was slain, and in dramatic fashion, no less. I stood close by its remains, wiping blo
od and fur from my face, and waited for the creature to stir, to rebuild itself.

  It never did.

  This time, it was down for the count.

  I looked up into the sky, grinning like an idiot. “I don't know where you're at right now, Whiro, but I hope you saw that.”

  Slipping in the blood-slick grass, Germaine crawled up towards me and tried to offer words of congratulation. “Y-ya did it, kiddo...” He gagged a bit, his furry carapace painted a deep red. “But why'd ya have to go and do it that way?”

  Trudging through the gore, I smirked as Kubo palmed away the beast's blood. “Don't suppose you've got a flask or something I can borrow? I've got a friend who's in need of some Manticore blood.”

  Kubo proved surprisingly cool about getting showered in monster blood and slapped me in the arm. “I'll be damned. For once, you really took care of business, Lucy.” From his pocket he drew out a glass vial. “We can gather up a sample of this and get it to Joe right away.”

  I snatched it out of his hand and approached the mountain of gushing meat, holding up the lip of the vial to catch some of the blood as it dribbled into the field. “I'll run it over there myself. Won't take me but a few minutes,” I said. “I'll have Joe back in the city before you guys can even get this mess cleaned up,” I added.

  “Not so fast, Lucy,” replied the Chief. “You've... you've done real well today. You have my thanks. But... there's still something we need to talk about. I don't want you running off just yet.”

  Malcolm, wiping blood off of his jacket, grimaced. “Now, why in the hell did you have to go and blow it to hell like this? Ain't gonna have anything worth hangin' on my mantle now. You mangled the entire body, for Christ's sake. Can't get a trophy outta this shit pile.”

  Percy climbed over the remains of the Manticore's tail, smacking at the rigid lengths with the side of his blade. “I dunno, dad. This stinger might be good. Could mount that.”

  Kubo grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. “Ignore them. What we need to talk about, Lucy, is--”

  “The marks?” I asked, motioning to the serpentine scars on my arm. “There's nothing to talk about.”

  The Chief's gaze narrowed. “Maybe you think it's none of my business, but my bosses are gonna think different. Like it or not, you're the Veiled Order's property, Lucy. Going around and modifying your body in this way... partaking in forbidden magic to give the demon in you more power... that's not gonna fly. You didn't ask permission. You didn't even--”

  “Sure, but I just helped save the world,” I added. “Again.”

  “Lucy...” Kubo motioned to one of the SUVs. “Let's sit down and have a talk, yeah? Let's get our story straight, figure out what we're going to tell Arson when we get back. Joe can wait a little while longer for us. Right now, what we need is to smooth things over, prove to Arson that this isn't a big deal.” Judging by the way Kubo was eye-fucking the scars on my arm, though, he apparently thought this was a pretty big deal.

  I bent down and picked up Germaine, letting him onto my shoulder. “No, I won't wait, Chief. Joe needs this and I can't just sit around getting lectured while he straddles the line between life and death. Sorry. We can talk later. If Arson wants to scold me, well... whatever.”

  “No, Arson is going to want to do more than just scold you! He's going to want to... to penalize you, kid. He's going to want to, maybe... put you down. Lock you up. There's no telling. The sooner we handle this, try to make him warm up to the idea, the better,” pleaded Kubo.

  Since the Chief wasn't taking my word for it, Gadreel rose to the surface and shook him off. “Didn't you hear me the first time? I said no, sorcerer.” Then, leaning into Kubo's face, he added, “I answer to no man. Your organization does not own me, much as they wish they did.”

  Kubo took a step back, too weakened by the fight to put up a good front against the likes of Gadreel. “You're making a mistake here, Lucy,” he managed.

  I regained control and started past the platform. “I'll be back when this is done, Chief. We can talk then.”

  Pushing past the commandos, I made my way back to the shore.

  “So... we're gonna go see Joe, huh?” asked Germaine, eyeing the waterline ahead nervously. “Any chance I might, uh, sit this one out?”

  “Nope.”

  I dove into the water and started across the Detroit River for Mona's.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  41

  The old witch was sitting up near a windowsill, leafing through a book when Germaine and I barged in. Startled, she slithered on over to us, passing the table where Joe's body was still situated. “Lucian, what's happened?” she asked.

  Producing the glass vial of Manticore blood from my sodden pocket, I approached the table and gave it a little shake. “I got what we needed. What say we wake him up?”

  Mona didn't believe me, took the vial from my hand and inspected the crimson liquid in the light. “How can this be? The Manticore is defeated?”

  “Damn straight,” said I. “Can you help me sit him up?”

  Germaine, who'd bitched at me the whole way there for forcing him to take another dip in the freezing river, jumped down onto the table. He grumbled as Mona and I eased Joe into a seated position. His body was heavy, limp, but it still possessed a flicker of warmth. Standing beside him, my hand on his clammy wrist, I could sense his heartbeat just like I'd done with the Manticore.

  Gadreel shifted in my chest. “Your friend still lives. Administer the blood, quickly.”

  I chomped down on the cork stopper and opened the bottle, holding it up to Joe's lips. Carefully, I poured a few drops' worth into his mouth. Then, when I felt reasonably sure he wouldn't choke to death, I steadily poured the remainder down his throat.

  The effect was damn near instantaneous. Once the creature's blood had been consumed, Joe's body began to twitch. His skin grew warmer, his eyelids fluttered and his respirations grew louder. He was coming to.

  “Joe?” I said, patting his cheek. “Can you hear me, bud?”

  Coughing, Joe laid back against the table and opened his eyes narrowly. He smacked his lips and turned towards me. The first thing out of his mouth? Well, it wasn't exactly a thank you. “W-where am I? And... what the hell is that taste?” He wretched a little. “Oh, God. I'm gonna puke.”

  “Don't you dare!” Germaine poked at Joe's chin with his arm. “That's a pretty rare vintage. Don't go puking it up, kid!”

  “Hell yeah, it is! We go out and kill a Manticore for you and this is the thanks we get, huh?” I laughed. “Are you OK, man?”

  Taking a deep breath and clutching his gut, Joe nodded. “I... I think so. What happened, Lucy?” He blinked a few times, his eyes struggling to adjust to the daylight coming in through the window. “How long have I been here?” He leaned towards me a little. “Are you... crying?”

  “Crying?” I sniffed. “No way. I'm a Demon-Heart, dude. Everyone knows we don't cry for anything.”

  Germaine was about to mouth off, so I batted him off of the table and wiped at my eyes.

  “Glad to see you awake,” I said. “Thought you were done for, man.”

  Carefully, Joe sat up on the edge of the table and began massaging his temples. “The last thing I remember is facing off against that... thing. The Manticore. You guys... killed it?”

  I nodded. The reality was a lot more complicated than that, but the broad strokes were all he needed to hear right then. “More or less. It was messy, but we managed to kill it and save your ass. Could have gone worse.”

  “What about the guy who did this? The one with the white mask?” he asked.

  I tensed. Whiro. There was no telling where the fuck that guy had gotten off too. I'd given him a run for his money back near the river. He'd probably watched the big fight, had likely seen his lovely monster get its ass beat, but I hadn't seen him at all since our bout. He was out there, somewhere. Maybe he was stalking around the city, thinking up some new way to get reveng
e against the Veiled Order. Maybe he'd wised up and gone back to whatever dark corner he'd slithered out of.

  I had a feeling I hadn't seen the last of the dark lord, whatever the case.

  But now wasn't the time for worrying about that.

  Joe studied my arm, his brow furrowing as he traced the black scars with his eyes. “So... what's up with that, huh? You into tattoos or something now?”

  I reflexively hid it behind my back, chuckling. “We'll talk about that later...”

  Mona was speechless, slithering around the table and looking at Joe as though he'd just been brought back from the dead, Lazarus style. “Remarkable. Simply remarkable,” was all she managed to say after several minutes of awkward silence.

  Happy as I was to see Joe up and at 'em once again, I needed to get going. There was some other, less pleasant business I had to attend to. With a nod, I started for the door. “Germaine and I have an appointment at HQ we can't miss. Take your time resting up, Joe. And maybe pay your mom a visit. You've been out of commission a few days, so she's probably worried.”

  Joe sat upright, reaching out and plucking his leather jacket off of the nearby chair. “Hold on, Lucy! I'll come with.”

  I stopped near the door. “No, man. Right now you need to rest. I'll see you around, OK?”

  “Take care of yourself,” chirped Germaine, following at my heels. “We'll see you again soon... hopefully.”

  I walked out before he had the chance to protest further. Truthfully, there was no telling when I'd see Joe again. I was heading to HQ to chat with Arson and Kubo about the little stunt I'd pulled. There was every chance the bosses at the Veiled Order would reprimand me for taking on the Marks of Abbadon without their permission, and it was even possible that things would get ugly.

  And that was fine.

  The world was safe and Joe was once again among the living.

  I'd accomplished everything I'd set out to do. Whatever came next didn't matter a whole lot. Sure, I hoped that Arson would see things my way, that he'd understand why I'd done what I'd done. I mean, I'd been instrumental in saving the world for a second time. There probably weren't too many people on the Veiled Order's payroll who could boast the sort of batting average I was packing.