Soulfall (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 2)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  The first of the Furies comes, traveling through the stone pillars at the edge of the agora as if they weren’t even there. She tilts back her head and howls into the rush of the Erebus. I hear nothing but her. I still feel the drumbeat of the hellsong in the hollow of my chest, but its sound is lost in the vehemence of the cry. Her eight arms draw eight blades, and she sets about herself, striking at the corpses. She floats through them, a swath of death. The bodies of the corpses, sometimes torn apart from the force of her blows, spread around her in all directions.

  I have never seen such power.

  Another corpse tries to grab me. I duck and run my shoulder into it, sending it back into the crowd. Aiden cuts at a good undead and a bad one, sending coagulated chunks of corpseblood into the air.

  One hundred yards.

  This far out, it seems there are more of the corpses Nebuchadnezzar didn’t touch, or maybe they’ve just had more time to gather around us. We hack indiscriminately as we rush forward. One rips open the bottom of my pant leg, drawing a long bloody cut down my calf. I try to interpose a good corpse between us, but that one turns on me and strikes.

  Its fingernails scratch long lines across my chest.

  I run my sword through its face and use its convulsing body to block the path of the one behind me.

  Seventy-five yards.

  Another Fury comes to the agora, adding its own deafening cry to the fray. The third will be here soon. A corpse, once a woman, bites into my arm, the one I’m using to hold Aiden’s hand. I lose his grip. I bring the hilt down on the back of her neck and stab out into the face of the next corpse. I have no idea if it was turned by Neb’s dust or not. Aiden’s fighting now too, his white blade picking up speed. It’s as if he was born to do this.

  Fifty yards.

  He is light on his feet.

  Of course he is, the Erebus gives us energy, didn’t you know? I breathe it in and feel its dark ether spreading throughout my limbs. It gives me strength like nothing else can. Except I don’t even need it. Here, my mind alone can move my body.

  Maybe it can move corpses too. Here, corpse, do my bidding, move.

  Maybe it’s moved by my mind, or maybe it’s just one of the corpses Neb’s powder had hit, I’m not sure—but it steps aside.

  Twenty-five yards.

  The third Fury is here, killing and screaming its way toward the other two, but I don’t care. Its horrid voice is no longer enough to overpower the hellsong which is singing to me—not with Myla’s voice, but with the song of angels, of demons, of humans and Nazis, all crying for one thing. They want me to make it to the bridge.

  Suddenly we’re between the ruins of buildings. The bridge is unearthly, a twenty foot wide structure that heads out into the rushing current of the dark air. It’s made of the same black whetstone as the bricked surface of the agora. On either side of the bridge are two stone guard rails, each about three feet tall. But the bridge ends, abruptly, as if the lightning tore it apart.

  Aiden runs up to its jagged edge and stops. I follow and turn my back to him. Three corpses are coming at me. I hack at them, sending one flailing over the edge. The second one falls under my blows, and the last I beat down with the hilt, its ancient skull crumpling beneath the infidel-forged metal.

  Aiden stands, one hand held before him. “I feel it!” His voice is tiny, and all but drowned out by the hellsong and the wind and the Furies, but he shouts it again. “I feel it!”

  He can touch his own soul.

  Another corpse stumbles onto the bridge. At this point, I don’t care. Let a Fury come. It ain’t getting by me.

  I slice it across the face once, twice, three times. It goes down by the bodies of the others. I turn back and see them, five more Furies, coming across the abyss from Sheol. They’re only tiny white spots, but I know how fast those things move. I hope we have time.

  I step up to the precipice by my son and ready Q’s sword.

  Then it happens.

  The dark air around my son shimmers. A white light shines down through the darkness to cover his shoulders. He stands there, colorless, illuminated in greys and blacks and whites. The energy pulses down around him. It rolls over and through him. The air about him starts to rise, rushing upward from the abyss below. His hair flutters and his shirt billows with the sudden updraft. As if drawn up by the wind, his arms rise.

  I don’t care if we make it back through this Hell or not. That’s not what’s important. What matters is that for this one moment, this one God damned moment, I have my son back. I don’t deserve this, and maybe no man does. I wasn’t a good father. There were times when I yelled at him, when I hit him, when I disciplined him too much, when I crushed his soul in the way that only a father can . . . but I’m only human. I didn’t do my best, but I did what I could. I tried hard, and I’ve spent the last three years pouring my heart out into the search for him, into his rescue, into his salvation from this dark disease his mother afflicted him with.

  I look behind me now as my son glows with the healing power of his own mind, look through the skeletons of buildings and the mob of corpses and the streaks of death left by the howling furies. Look to the downslope of this mountain to the tiny balls of fire which still rain in from the dyitzu beyond. I know that between us and the Hell I knew is the maze of dark caverns and nightmare that we traversed to get here.

  It’s clear to me now that we won’t make it back. It’s clear to me now that this is where I die.

  But that’s okay.

  Sometimes you have to let things go.

  All I want is my son back.

  The wind slows and the light dims and Aiden’s clothes settle. His face is tilted upward, eyes closed. The last of the glow leaves his pale cheeks. His is a face of contentment. Of bliss. Of health after being so sick for so long.

  He opens his eyes.

  His black eyes.

  His pitch black eyes.

  Suddenly I can’t see him well through the tears. I stumble backward, falling over a corpse. Q’s sword clatters against the stones as I hit the guard rail. Bits of ancient rock break away and tumble into the abyss behind me.

  “But . . .”

  Why? Didn’t he love me? I thought that he wouldn’t die without my permission. I can practically hear his voice saying the words . . .

  I pick up my sword and stand.

  He wouldn’t die without his father’s permission—and I was arrogant enough to think that he meant me. He was talking about the Archdevil. He was talking about Myla’s other lover. Aiden was so young when she took him, he probably barely remembered me. Was I really this arrogant? Had I really thought he would see me as his father after such a short time? All he’d seen me do was kill his new, nearly all-powerful dad—and murder his mother. He didn’t love me. He loved that demon. That thing.

  And now he has become what his adopted father always wanted. He is a wight.

  No wonder he’d only stayed on edge when we kept him sedated. When he was awake, he was fighting, not to live, but to die.

  The smile on his face is the most evil, the must gut-wrenching, the most hope crushing thing I’ve ever seen.

  Q told me once that I should abandon him and have a new child, and maybe there was wisdom in that.

  The smile on Aiden’s face disappears. In its place is a kind of pure rage that only a young man can have. “You killed her!” His voice no longer has trouble cutting through the cacophony.

  This is his moment. His father killed his mother, and now he’s getting his revenge. He must know the pain that is tearing through my soul. In that way, in his thirst for revenge, he is very much like me.

  I take a deep breath of the Erebus air and let it all go. The pain. The failure. The fear. And when those things are gone, only the love I have for my son remains.

  I think I’ve learned something about being a father. I think I’ve learned what it means to love a child. Father’s don’t get to choose what kind of men their sons become. They can hope, and they can coach,
but in the end it’s the boy’s decision. He decides what kind of man he’ll be. Aiden had been forced to grow up fast in the Hell he was born in. This is his decision.

  It’s time I let him go.

  “Run.” I tell him, turning to the approaching Furies. “I’ll hold them off.”

  He’s stunned. His black eyes widen as his pale face slackens.

  For a second, he does nothing. “But . . .”

  “I love you, son,” I yell. “You have to choose who you’re going to be. I can’t do that for you. If you want to be a wight, then that’s what you’ll be. Now go, run! Don’t let the infidels see you.”

  He’s motionless. “But I’ll kill the people you love.”

  I look at him. “Aiden, you are the people I love.” I turn to face the howling eight-armed white angels. “Now go!”

  His white sword is shaking in his hands. I learn now that wights can cry.

  Finally, he runs, jumping over the slain corpses, heading back toward Soulfall.

  I step up to the edge of the bridge and look out into the abyss, to the oncoming rush of the five Furies, to their forty arms and forty blades. I need not kill them. I just have to give Aiden some time.

  Jesus had it the wrong way round, you see. It’s not the son that should be sacrificed.

  “Cris!” I hear him shout. “Help me!”

  I turn, glancing over my shoulder. There he is at the foot of the bridge. For a moment, as a bolt of lightning rushes by, he’s just a silhouette. Behind him is the sea of undead and the ripples of the Erebus. The three Furies already on the plateau are cutting the dead down around them, sending their mangled corpses out in all directions. A series of fireballs, so far away they’re barely be visible, coast along the river of darkness, soaring like distant birds over our heads, curving with the current.

  The undead are flocking to Aiden. Shit. Now he’s a wight. The corpses Neb turned must now view him as their enemy.

  Why can’t I just die?

  I run to him.

  Unlike the dead, we know to run from the Furies. There are eight of them on Soulfall now, and I see dozens more coming from both upriver and down.

  When we leave the plateau we will be horribly vulnerable as there will be no other targets.

  It’s easier, with the dead’s number so thinned out, to run across the black brick of whetstone. I strike down one corpse that reaches at me.

  We come to the steps.

  Aiden is fearless. He descends the stairs and starts hopping down the mountain, from rock to rock, letting his momentum carry him on. For some reason I want to pause after each leap, to catch my balance before charging forward, but there’s no time.

  A single slip, and I’ll die.

  I see the tunnel ahead of us as we race down—and I dare a backward glance.

  Two Furies leave the plateau and head toward us.

  Jesus. They can travel through stone, so they’ll cut through the maze of Soulfall as if it wasn’t even there while Aiden and I will be forced to run around corridors and hallways.

  “No time!” I shout. “We have to climb over!”

  Who knows if we have any chance of getting by the dyitzu which were crawling over the mountainside when we last left it, but I’d fight them before fighting a Fury. We start ascending the lower mount, half climbing, half running. It’s less steep on this side, and we make better progress.

  We arrive at the summit. I look to the cliffs of Gehenna ahead of us. There are still some dyitzu there, but not nearly as many as there were before. I guess most of them are running around in that maze inside Soulfall.

  I take another look behind. The Furies are closer. Maybe they know that we’re the cause of all this. Maybe they couldn’t sense us in this eddy of the Erebus before, but they sure as hell can now.

  We skip over the rocks, charging down the mountain. I feel the Furies’ calls on the back of my neck. They grow louder and louder. I shout to Aiden, but I can’t even hear my own voice.

  The dyitzu on the rocks ahead of us turn and flee. Even they dare not face these things.

  Aiden is running faster than I thought a boy could. Maybe the mad world around us is lending its strength to his stride in accordance with his belief, or maybe his wight limbs give him more power—or maybe he’s just running for his life.

  There’s only one problem, we’re running out of Soulfall.

  And there, I see them, Q and El Cid and Neb, standing on the cliff across from us. One of the Furies is focused on the dyitzu, but another is heading toward us. I know I will feel one of its blades cutting through my back. Its call is shaking my insides, vibrating my heart with its intensity. I must be deaf.

  Aiden sees the infidels and stops. I hope like hell they haven’t spotted him.

  “Around there!” I yell in the pause between Fury calls, pointing at a jut in the slope. “Try to leave Soulfall there. Maybe the infidels won’t see you!”

  His black eyes stare at me, but his face is not expressionless. It is filled with sorrow. “Father.”

  What a nightmare that he calls me that now.

  “Run!” I shout as the Fury’s call picks back up again.

  Aiden does so. I leave him, racing toward the infidels. I see their shouting faces, though I can’t hear anything through the cacophony. I come to the edge and leap, but not far enough. I’m sinking fast, and as I fall I look up for my son, hoping to see him.

  I don’t.

  The rock face is before me.

  I brace myself.

  I’m tumbling down the cliff wall, my vision blurred. I land on something. The world is still spinning. I can’t breathe. The Fury is all I can hear. Instinctively, I try to roll away. I think my ankle is broken.

  Maybe I shouldn’t think that.

  All is purple, and then come the blue flickers, light from the Erebus, and the rocks around me all seem blue, too. I think I got hit in the head pretty hard at some point because I can tell I’m not thinking clearly. My clothes are tatters. I’m a bloody mess.

  Q’s sword lies beside me. The cave is low, maybe four feet tall. It seems like a nice enough place to hide, or heal . . . or it would be if I could trust that my nightmares wouldn’t kill me. Can I stand? I don’t think so. My right ankle is swelling badly into Jessica’s shoe. The cuts the undead had left on my body sting.

  Will the dyitzu find me?

  Will a Fury?

  Does El Cid know I’m alive?

  Did Aiden make it?

  Q’s sword is dimming. I didn’t know they did that. And the flickering blue lights seem darker too. I close my eyes for a second. I’ll open them up and see if things get brighter. Not yet. Better give it another minute.

  Aiden.

  My heart is racing in my chest.

  Aiden has turned. He chose his mother. He chose the Archdevil. How terrible he was, his blue eyes black, his skin white as marble. I’ve lost everything.

  I wait for death, or rescue, or something . . . but ain’t shit happening. So instead of waiting, I think. Every victory in Hell is a hollow one. I’m aware that, on long enough timelines, even people who don’t age are bound to die.

  So Aiden left me? So what? In the end, it would have been the same anyway. Even if I’d saved him, he’d end up dead and damned and tortured. Probably, no matter what path I took, he’d eventually end up the demon his mother wanted him to be.

  Probably.

  Whatever God or the Devil, or whomever the fuck is in charge around here, wants is what will happen . . . I couldn’t control that. All I could do was try to give my son every opportunity at happiness I could. All I could do was give him the chance to do whatever he wanted to do, to love whoever he wanted to love, to be whatever he wanted to be.

  That was my job.

  Don’t think I didn’t listen when Q was teaching me about virtue. Some things make a horse a good horse. Some things make a person a good person. But let me tell you something. I know there are some qualities which make a man a good father, and though I may h
ave been late to the race, I sure as hell came through at the end.

  Maybe.

  Or maybe if I really had, Aiden would have wanted to be human.

  “Myla. We fucked up. I think he escaped Soulfall. He’s a strong boy. He’s going to make it. You’ll see. Maybe you were right. Maybe I should have just let you be. I guess we’ll never know. I guess we might have pulled him too hard in different directions. But he’s strong Myla. He’s strong. He’ll be a great wight. I know he will. He’ll kill lots of us . . .”

  And with that I find I can no longer lie to myself. The simplicity of my fate strikes me.

  I failed.

  No infidel would have spared Aiden. That’s good, too, because infidels don’t cry, and I can’t help myself.

  I failed.

  I’m sorry, Cid. I failed.

  Even here, on the edge of the Erebus, I can tell that reality isn’t quite as malleable to my mind as it was on Soulfall, but the hellsong is still more or less subjective.

  I’m going to have to let him go. This is what he wanted. I wasn’t anything like what my parents wanted either, and I turned out okay. Didn’t I?

  Didn’t I?

  I didn’t.

  My missions are over. My quests all failed. I’ve nothing left to do but die.

  “You hear me, Satan?” I shout, my voice echoing oddly in the tight cavern. “You taking requests? Play me something, huh? Just don’t make it anything like that Clementine bullshit.”

  I lean back my head against the stone as Myla’s voice starts.

  Sometimes, I feel . . . like a motherless child.

  Maybe, after the dyitzu kill me, there will be still be some music left for them.

  And sometimes, I feel . . . like a motherless child.

  I’ve lost blood. I’ve lost faith. I’ve lost my son.

  A long ways . . . from home.

  Slowly, I lose consciousness too.

  A long long ways . . . from home.

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