I would continue to burn until the end of times.
As hours became days, days became weeks, weeks turned into months and years and eventually centuries, I was struck by an idea: perhaps this ocean of fire had a shore. To a man doomed to burn forever, even a single moment of respite from the heat may feel like paradise. The idea was crazy but gave me hope. I had a purpose again. A reason to struggle and fight. Instead of floating aimlessly through the ocean of fire, I began to swim, one powerful stroke at a time. There was no sky, no stars, no up or down. Only the omnipresent fire. No matter where I looked, the world was burning.
I don’t how many years passed before I spotted the rocky outcropping on the horizon. The eternal fire couldn’t hurt me any longer. I embraced the agony. Allowed it to define me. Shape and mold me and make me stronger.
By the time my burning body crawled out of the inferno and up the dark rocks, I was more devil than man. I had become part of this accursed place. The righteous knight I once was had faded in my memory. I now belonged to the darkness.
Waiting for me on the black beach was none other than Morgal. The winged beast with his forked tail and horned head watched me with approval. I had conquered the ocean of flame and proven myself worthy of joining his infernal legions.
As Morgal extended his clawed hand, my burning flesh changed, becoming reptilian.
The knight was gone. Only the demon remained.
And as I felt the transformation take hold, blinding red light engulfed my world once again. I was Mike Raven, the occult detective, once more. My twisted trip down Cyon’s memory lane was over.
14
I felt like I was still on fire even though I was back in the ice-covered city park. Snow danced around my face and melted in my beard, but I couldn’t shake off the horror of burning alive. None of it had been real, I told myself over and over again. Those were Cyon’s memories, not mine.
I unbuttoned my coat. The cold air cooled my sweating body somewhat. The memories had been so vivid, so real. And through them I’d gained a new understanding of what drove the knight turned demon. Despite having endured the tortures of damnation, witches could still affect him on a psychological and emotional level.
This battle was personal.
A witch had seduced and betrayed Cyon, condemning him to Hell. But she had also introduced him to witchcraft. Taught him the witch tongue that could unlock the horrible secrets of grimoires, showed him how to channel black magic and cast spells. Those skills hadn’t saved him from being burned alive, but they sure would come in handy right now against Malcasta and her coven.
A silhouette flickered among the park’s snow-laden trees. Another branch snapped, and I whirled in the direction of the sound. Moonlight trickled through the skeletal branches and undergrowth, carving tiny patches of light from the darkness. Shadows shrouded the frozen landscape.
One of them moved.
My demonically enhanced vision picked up the figure among the trees. Sword up in one hand and Hellseeker ready in the other, I gingerly took a step into the darkness.
The shape kept advancing. Apparently, it didn’t care that I had spotted it. This gave me pause. There was a single-minded determination in the way the figure bee-lined straight toward me. The witches had seen me in action, and I would have expected them to be cautious. This phantom seemed indifferent to his or her safety.
My body tensed, and I clutched my blessed weapons. As the stranger emerged from the darkness, I forgot to exhale. My heart pounded in my chest, and blood roared in my ears. How could he be here? He looked lost, his confused gaze mirroring mine.
“Skulick?” I asked.
The question hung in the air.
“Be careful!” Cyon advised me. I heeded his advice and kept my guard up. I’d seen enough craziness today to not take anything at face value.
“Mike, is that you? Where am I?”
Skulick’s voice sounded uncertain, not at all like himself. My partner rarely showed vulnerability. And then it hit me. The figure before me wasn’t flesh and blood but an apparition. I was looking at his soul, his spirit. Terror spiraled up my spine. If Skulick was a ghost, did that mean he was gone? No, I refused to consider the possibility I might have already failed him. This was a trick. The witch was trying to rattle me, throw me off balance. And the cunning wench was succeeding.
“Mike? Please, help me.”
My partner’s pitiful voice echoed in the clearing. Seeing Skulick lost and helpless as a child shook me to the core.
“Ignore him!” Cyon said. “Malcasta is using your partner against you!”
I could feel my grip on Demon Slayer loosening as my resolve faltered. And that is when Malcasta struck.
The ground around me came alive, tremors passing through the snowy terrain. I recoiled as the ice morphed into human silhouettes. Arms and limbs and crude heads emerged as if invisible hands were shaping the snow. Within seconds, a small army of muscular snow golems ringed me.
The witch was fighting dirty.
Malcasta had conjured a nightmare from my past. Back in Iowa, when I was a little boy, the demon Morgal had sent an army of ice beasts after my parents and me. Malcasta must’ve extracted the terrible memory from my head and was turning the past against me now.
The ice beasts closed in, their frozen bodies making no sound as they trudged through the snow. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. They would tear me limb from limb.
“Raven, listen!” Cyon said. “Malcasta is using your fear against you. Don’t let her win!”
Hopelessness gripped me. I had failed to save my parents when the ice beasts struck two decades earlier. Now, another person I cared about would succumb to the forces of darkness. History was about to repeat itself, and once again it would be my fault.
“It doesn’t have to, Raven. You’re not that frightened little boy any longer. You’re the world’s greatest monster hunter. You’ve faced vampires and demons and ghosts. You can stop the terror this time!”
I let Cyon’s words sink in. He was right. I hunted nightmares. These snow creatures were laughable compared to the weird shit I’d seen. Malcasta was probing my mind, using the terrors of my past as a weapon. And I didn’t like it one bit.
“That’s right, tap into that anger. Channel your rage. Don’t let Malcasta defeat you!”
As I regarded the approaching ice monsters, a strange sense of calm fell over me. Cyon was right.
Screaming wordlessly, I brought Demon Slayer down on the first ice creature. Steel cut through the frozen body, and the golem collapsed into a pile of snow. I roared and swung the sword toward the second golem. I took the head off in one fell swoop, the whole creature turning into a puddle of water before my eyes.
Realizing that I had overcome my initial terror, the golems attacked as a unit, descending on me all at once.
Fired up, I unleashed Hellseeker’s wrath upon the sinister snowmen, the blessed bullets shattering one monster after another in explosions of ice and snow. At the same time, my sword continued to slash and spear. The past had shaped me, made me the man I was today, but it no longer controlled and haunted me. I wasn’t a little boy but a man who dwelled among shadows and ate nightmares for breakfast.
I wasn’t scared of snowmen or witches or even demons anymore.
The servants of darkness feared me.
I don’t remember how long I blasted and carved my way through the snow golems. At last, the rush of anger-fueled adrenaline faded, and I was left alone amidst piles of glittering show. No sign of the strange monsters remained. Skulick’s spirit had vanished too.
Above me, the majestic skyline of the Cursed City dwarfed a snow-toped tree line. The metropolis sparkled and glittered like jewels in the darkness. It was so goddamn beautiful, and I felt a rush at just being alive in this moment to see it. My laughter filled the air—and to be honest, I sounded like a madman. Malcasta had pushed me to the brink, but I was more than ready to push back.
“Show yourself, witch, if you d
are. We’re ready for you!”
We. I said it, accepted the truth of it once and for all. Cyon and me. Demon and Demon Hunter. Hell better beware—there was a new team of monster hunters in town. And we weren’t fucking around.
“Malcasta!” I bellowed.
Her name reverberated through the park. As the echoes faded, a rumbling sound grew louder all around me. I wheeled and saw a giant tidal wave of ice blasting toward me as if I was standing in the direct path of an avalanche. Where was all the snow coming from?
Don’t ask stupid questions, I chided myself. When you’re dealing with witchcraft, anything is possible.
The wall of frozen death slammed into me and pulled me along the ground, burying me under a pile of snow. Darkness enveloped me, and I struggled with each breath. I recalled the feeling of being dragged underground by the zombies from Cyon’s vision. Claustrophobia gripped me, my panic building. Stars danced before my eyes as my lungs labored to fill with precious oxygen.
I couldn’t scream for help, couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but die.
And then I felt a force yank me out of my icy prison and whisk me back to the surface, where the frozen night air raked my lungs. I sucked in the ice crystals anyway, grateful to be alive.
The ice had battered my body. Every joint and muscle ached. I was quite literally frozen stiff. And that’s when Malcasta materialized in front of me. I sensed the heat radiating off her inhuman presence, and I hate to admit it, but I was so cold I almost welcomed her warming presence.
Her hand reached out, and I was awash with a pleasant warmth. I let out an involuntary sigh as my body began to thaw. Then the two objects safely tucked away in the inner pocket of my trench coat flew into the witch’s waiting hand.
A triumphant smile curled Malcasta’s skinned features as she held up the Ice Witch’s heart—and with it, the grimoire I’d recovered from Varthek. The blue crystal shimmered in the darkness. Malcasta had claimed her prize. The Cursed City was about to be plunged into a nightmare from which it would never awake.
Almost immediately, the night sky cleared, revealing a small ring of witches overhead. They circled the clearing hundreds of feet above us on their flying branches, eager to celebrate their mistress’s victory.
My weapons remained trapped in the ice. I was unarmed. Defenseless. Screwed.
Malcasta held the crystalized heart above her head for a beat and then rammed the magical relic right into her own chest. Blue-green flames enveloped her, and her eyes ignited with an ominous light.
My gaze turned toward the city’s skyline above the rampart of skeletal trees. One by one, the towers went dark as all the lights went out, drowning the city in darkness. We were all being whisked backward in time, the technological advances of the past century being stripped away by Malcasta’s spell. Would anyone else besides me even remember what it was like before we were trapped in the embrace of her dark magic? Or would I be the last man alive who recalled the cell phone, television, or microwave?
A beam of blinding light burst from Malcasta’s open chest and slammed into me with the force of a bullet. The impact snapped my head back and flung me backward into the snow. I hit the ice hard, and the world grew dim around me. I clung to consciousness, but my efforts were in vain. A veil of blackness fell over me, sweeping away all other thoughts.
15
The Hummer pulled up to the convent of St. Paul with a screech of tires. Father Cabrera and the rest of the team got out of the vehicle. The snow was falling hard and fast, the surreal lightning storm growing stronger by the minute, giving their grim faces a hellish sheen.
Flakes raked Archer’s face as she followed the exorcists, the icy downpour painful against her skin. She gagged on the acrid stench of the unnatural precipitation, a sizzling combination of ozone and bloody copper.
Archer was still struggling with the idea how commonplace technology like cell phones and computers could vanish from one moment to the other. Even more disturbing, none of the other exorcists except for Father Cabrera seemed to know what she was talking about whenever she brought up the missing tech. Technology was being erased, and for some reason she and Cabrera alone were holding onto the memories of the world as it was supposed to be.
Fighting back a shudder, Archer clutched the protective talisman Skulick had gifted her. The Medal of the Saints had protected her from the effects of the zombie fog during their battle with the ghoul, and she figured it was the reason why she remained aware of all the disappearing technology around them. Cabrera drew a similar form of protection from his silver cross.
The other exorcists weren’t as fortunate. They didn’t even react as sudden darkness enveloped the city, oblivious to the change. Street lamps and traffic lights winked out of existence as if they had never been a ubiquitous fixture of the urban sprawl. Archer swapped a panicked look with Cabrera, her throat tight with terror. They were the only ones who noticed as the lights went out.
“Oh my God, it’s happening again,” Archer said.
“The witch’s spell is reversing human progress.”
Get a grip on yourself, she told herself. Losing your shit while the world was going to hell in a handbasket won’t help anyone.
She stole a glance at Cabrera. Despite the man’s experience in facing demons, his gray eyes mirrored her own mounting fear. They were up against a formidable enemy, yet he pressed on. Archer, inspired by the exorcist’s example, did the same.
They entered the dark convent with their weapons out and ready. Cabrera’s silver cross held up high, its sizzling mystical light mapping the way. Archer clutched the Witch Whip, which was hot to the touch. Black magic permeated the air. Something very bad had happened here.
They were too late.
Her grip tightened on the whip when she spotted the first dead nun. Father Cabrera crouched over the body and inspected the corpse. The nun’s features were frozen in a rictus of terror, almost like a grin, the skin covered in a series of ugly wounds. Bite marks of some sort, if she had to guess.
Archer clenched her jaw. “They got here first.”
Cabrera nodded as he closed the dead nun’s eyes.
They continued their advance in grave silence, following the trail of bodies all the way into a small chapel. Moonlight shafted through the broken stained-glass windows. Signs of a hard battle were everywhere. The bodies of dead nuns littered the floor, their white robes stained crimson. Overturned pews framed their remains.
Growing anger outweighed Archer’s revulsion. Someone had to make these monsters pay for their crimes.
Cool it, Jane, she told herself.
The massacre was bad, but so were a hundred other crime scenes. Getting emotional about it was a rookie mistake. As a former homicide detective in a big city, she had experienced a lifetime’s worth of horrors. She forced herself to treat the slaughter like just another case.
A sudden whimper in the dark chapel thrust her out of her thoughts, and everyone in Cabrera’s team whirled toward the source of the sound. They eased closer to a lone figure crouched at the center of the chapel, the body under the habit heaving with each successive sob.
A survivor. Or a trap?
Archer and Cabrera approached the crying woman. How had she avoided the fate of her sisters? The nun didn’t acknowledge their presence, lost in a world of her own. Who could blame the poor woman after what had happened?
Cabrera crouched in front of the nun. “Sister, are you okay?” When she failed to acknowledge either his presence or his question, he added, “Can you talk?”
“It was that man, the detective in the trench coat,” she blubbered. Ice crept up Archer’s back at the description and the chilling implication that came with it.
“You’re saying Raven killed these nuns?”
“He was like a man possessed. He had a gun and a sword…” Her feeble voice trailed off.
Like a man possessed.
Archer stood rooted to the spot. That last statement hit close to home. Had Rav
en lost control over the demon? It sure as hell looked that way.
No, Raven wasn’t capable of such a monstrous act. Not in a million years. She refused to accept it, but Cabrera didn’t seem so reluctant to assign blame.
“I told you Raven was dangerous,” he said, turning to look at Archer. “You cannot strike a bargain with a demon.”
Archer took a step toward the nun, intent on questioning the woman herself. “I don’t think Raven would do something like this unless he had a good reason.”
“What possible reason could he have to slaughter these nuns?”
Sudden insight sparked in her mind. “What if they were being controlled by the witch? That would—”
Archer broke off. Her whip had ignited with a fiery heat when she touched the nun’s shoulder. And that meant the woman in front of her was an agent of darkness herself. Archer’s instincts had been right—this was a trap all along.
“You’re not a nun!” Archer cried out.
The sister’s lost expression gave way to a diabolical grin, and the skin peeled off her face in long, bloody strips.
“How observant of you!”
The monster nun bolted to her feet. Her show of grief dissolved into a murderous rage as the she flung herself at Archer with a bloodcurdling shriek.
16
My surroundings snapped back into focus as a wave of pulsing light wrenched me from unconsciousness. Above me, lightning scarred the night. I tried to move and realized I couldn’t. Thick ropes restrained my upper body, and a wooden beam dug sharply into my back.
Still disoriented, I craned my neck and spotted a robed figure tied to the tree to my right. Her face was a mass of red, and her body slumped forward. The only reason she was still on her feet was because of the ropes wrapped around her. It had to be Damona. Or at least whatever the crows had spared of her.
Seeing her pathetic state galvanized me, and I strained against the ropes. But despite my demonic strength, they wouldn’t budge. Malcasta must’ve magically enhanced them somehow. There was no escape.
Witch Wars (Shadow Detective Book 7) Page 11
