March till Death (Hellsong Book 3)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  Hidalgo drew out some dried dyitzu jerky from his pack, but kept it low so that Martin’s body would hide it from the others.

  “You be eating this,” Hidalgo said.

  “I’m fine,” Martin answered.

  Hidalgo’s dreadlocks swung around his head as it shook. “No. You not be fine. Your stomach, it making loud noise. It roaring, and dyitzu, they hearing this. Martin, you be eating.”

  Martin nodded, accepting the gift. He took his first bite . . . then his second . . . and then he devoured it. Dyitzu meat had never tasted so good to him.

  He was still hungry. Worse than that, he was still starving, but the meal had taken some of the edge off.

  “Thank you, friend,” Martin told the hermit.

  Hidalgo smiled. “My friend, Martin man, you be ready to do this? You never seen this place before. It be . . . it be . . . it be wrong. It be wrong in a way that hurts you . . .” Hidalgo put his fist over his chest. “ . . . here.”

  Martin noticed that his own hands were shaking. “I’m not ready. Not at all. Not even Aaron was ready.”

  He stood up and, together with Hidalgo, he rejoined Tucker and Huxley.

  “This way,” Martin said.

  He walked towards the Carrion. The cold wasn’t his imagination, he realized, and it was darker in the corridor beyond as well. The barrier had been reduced to two piles of stones on either side of the dim corridor. There was some loose gravel and a few random cobblestones that the undead troop must have tracked in here. The detritus crunched under his feet. He felt goosebumps rise up on his arm, either from the cold or from his own fear—or both.

  I’ll be careful, Katie.

  Behind him he heard Huxley chamber a round into his 700 Remington. Martin drew his pistol and flipped off the safety.

  The Carrion lay before him.

  Galen froze.

  Arturus watched his father intently, looking for a clue as to why he had stopped. Arturus turned back and saw the rest of his friends come silently to a halt. They were watching Galen too.

  His father began creeping backwards, taking care to stay quiet. The room beyond was better lit than the corridor they were in, causing Galen’s long shadow to fall at Arturus’ feet. The shadow got closer as Galen inched backwards, covering Arturus’ boots.

  Kelly was at Arturus’ side, and he felt her tense.

  A dyitzu’s shadow crept into view, overlapping with Galen’s—the image in profile, its angular head crossing from Arturus’ right to his left. It moved just a little beyond Galen’s shadow and then stopped.

  Did it hear us? Smell us?

  Then another shadow appeared. And another. And then the black elongated shape of a person—or a corpse. He tried to judge its identity from its limping gate, but the walk seemed a little too smooth for a corpse, and a little to jerky to be human.

  They can’t be with One Horn, then. He only had dyitzu with him.

  More devils, and then more humanesque shadows, made their way across the passage.

  Galen’s measured retreat continued.

  The shadows kept coming—then a larger one, with a bull’s head and one horn.

  Damn.

  Kelly’s eyes widened and she clutched Arturus’ arm. She pulled at him, and like his father, Arturus also began inching backwards. The one horned shadow moved on and more dyitzu followed.

  Finally, those inching steps brought them back out of that room.

  “This way?” Aaron whispered pointing to another corridor.

  Galen shook his head. “That leads back to the city. We have to go this way.”

  A light mist hung in that corridor.

  Arturus shook his head violently. “We can’t!” he whispered harshly. “That leads to the Erebus.”

  Galen nodded.

  Aaron threw his arms out wide. “But the Furies? You said nothing can withstand them.”

  Galen turned to face Aaron. “Nothing. Not me. Not you. No devil nor angel can withstand a Fury. Not even that Minotaur.”

  Galen walked into the mist. Arturus could do nothing but follow him.

  “Quickly,” Galen shouted, “there’s no way to know how much time we’ll have.”

  The mist in the air conformed to Arturus’ will. He could shift it, move it to one side, or make it thicker elsewhere. The stone had become natural, and there was no evidence that any of it had been cut or worked over, even by Hell’s architect. Flashes of blue light would illuminate the caves at random intervals. Arturus watched his feet cut through the supernatural mist.

  The mist that obeys my mind.

  He remembered Galen’s warning about being this close to Sheol. He remembered how thoughts here could subtly affect reality, how hellsong might bend to his will—and how a moment’s fantasy might be enough to kill.

  The passageway opened up to the Erebus, the river of darkness.

  This was the second time Arturus had seen it, but he was no less in awe for having experienced it before.

  The river itself was a dimness that filled the chasm between the two Hells Arturus had heard called Gehenna and Sheol. Through the darkness swam cords, thick as trees, made out of a blue light so intense it hurt to look at them. Those cords swept across the chasm, breaking, forking in two before binding together again, weaving themselves into a tremendous tapestry that hung down from the infinite heights above to dangle into the infinite depths below. Their light cut through the dim water-like vapors that were the Erebus, creating pockets of visibility around themselves through which Arturus could see the stone shelf of Sheol—the Hell beyond his own. The place that, unless the stories were mistaken, he was destined to go to if he should die here. A place where every Carrion born he’d ever killed might be waiting for him. A place where Saint Wretch lived.

  There was a howl, distant, but louder than anything else he’d heard in Hell.

  “It’s like a train,” Aaron said.

  Kelly nodded.

  Galen moved out onto the ledge that had formed where the tunnel ended, looking around. “There!” he shouted, pointing upwards. “Look! If we climb there, the Minotaur will not be able to catch us.”

  Arturus looked to Johnny. The man had been burnt badly and was nearing a state of shock. Dakota swayed where he stood. His eyes were still unfocused, and he didn’t seem to have a good understanding of what was going on. Avery seemed unnaturally pale, but at least he was alert.

  We might lose any one of them in this climb. Any one, or all three.

  The howl stopped, but only for a moment, and when it came back it was louder. Arturus saw them, two Furies, coming up the Erebus. They were distant, two tiny lights on the edge of his vision.

  Or all of us.

  Arturus looked up the rock face to the opening where his father had pointed. It was about fifty yards up. The gradient of the slope was steep, but it wasn’t completely vertical, and there were many handholds. It would have been an easy climb had they not been saddled with wounded and forced to reckon with the threats of the Furies and the Minotaur.

  Arturus leapt up to the stone and started climbing.

  “Don’t worry,” Galen said. “The rocks are steady and easy to hold on to.”

  At first Arturus could hear the others behind him while they climbed, but as the Furies got closer, he could no longer hear their grunts, nor the sound of displaced pebbles skittering down the side of the cliff.

  He looked back to the Furies. They were closer now, but not by much.

  We might make it.

  He looked down when he’d made it halfway. Galen had climbed off to one side, perhaps so that he could come across and help anyone in need. Johnny was keeping up, and the danger of the climb seemed to have given him focus. Avery was lagging behind, though. Arturus waited for him to get a little closer. Avery’s pants were stained with fresh blood.

  His stitches must have opened again.

  Dakota was the worst off and the farthest down. Kelly was just above him, trying to coax him upwards.

  The gradi
ent of the climb for the second half was more forgiving, and Arturus was glad for it. As he gauged the distance of the oncoming Furies, he felt that they would need to make better time.

  “He’s here!” Kelly shouted.

  Below, on the ledge they had left behind just five minutes before, the Minotaur stood, looking up at them. There were dyitzu there too, flanking him. Arturus could tell, instinctively, that they were afraid, though he could not remember having ever seen them fearful before.

  The calls of the Furies mixed together, becoming loud enough to hurt Arturus’ ears. For a moment one was silent.

  “Take cover!” Galen was shouting. “There are dyitzu below!”

  Arturus climbed so that a large jut was below him. With that, and the change in the slope of the cliff, the dyitzu wouldn’t be able to get a clean throw at him. Aaron was coming up next, and Arturus waved him on.

  “Keep this rock behind . . .” Arturus shouted, but the noise of the Furies was so intense that he couldn’t hear his own voice.

  He waited until one was quiet. “Keep this rock behind us! They can’t see us.”

  Aaron nodded. Then he climbed by.

  Dyitzu fire spun upwards into the chasm above. The fireballs passed freely through the dark portions of the Erebus, lighting up the stones and the blue cords around them with their red firelight. When they touched the blue cords, they exploded, raining down droplets of liquid fire. Arturus had never seen a sight more terrifyingly beautiful.

  Galen was firing one handed back down the cliff with his MP5. Avery and Johnny, one bloody and the other burned, came up around the jut next. Arturus climbed to one side so he could look down.

  He searched for Kelly, but he couldn’t see her.

  “Where’s Kelly?” he screamed at Avery and Johnny.

  “What?”

  “Where’s Kelly?”

  Waves of dyitzu fire swept past the jut Arturus was using for cover.

  That was close. As they climb higher, they’ll have better shots at us.

  “She’s with . . .” the rest of Avery’s sentence was blocked out by the twin calls of the Furies.

  “What?”

  “Dakota. The bitch is with Dakota.”

  The Furies were getting ever closer. They seemed to be made out of the same kind of effervescent substance that he might have imagined angels were made out of—except these things were no angels.

  Arturus climbed to one side so that he could see Kelly. He saw a dyitzu far below, climbing up the rock. It formed a fireball. Arturus drew his pistol, but the thing had already hurled its fire at him. Arturus climbed over to his left, firing downwards. One bullet caught it in its face. The dyitzu fell backwards, bouncing off a stone and tumbling into the Erebus, spinning through the dark gaps between the blue cords until it touched one—the dyitzu’s corpse erupted into a shower of blood.

  Oh hell.

  Arturus holstered his pistol, climbed a little farther, and looked down. There Kelly was, side by side with Dakota, shouting at him. They had found a fissure that was keeping them safe from the dyitzu fire. In a moment where one Fury’s call ceased, he heard more of Galen’s gunshots.

  Arturus looked up to their destination. Aaron was already there, standing on the ledge.

  I could be with him in a second.

  Aaron bent down and helped Avery up. Johnny was nearly there too.

  Arturus looked back to the Furies.

  They were larger than he expected. The light that made them was shaped like warrior women, each one perhaps twenty feet tall—it was hard to tell at this distance—but their light spread out behind them on all sides in wing-like streams.

  Maybe a thousand more yards?

  Kelly and Dakota were rushing up through a part of their climb that left them vulnerable to dyitzu fire. The fireballs tore through the air around them. One impacted with the rock next to Kelly and sent its burning droplets across her. She didn’t slow down at all, but climbed on.

  Galen was coming towards Arturus.

  Arturus climbed farther up, stopping again to look. Dakota had slipped and was falling back down towards the fissure. He was going to die.

  Kelly went back for him.

  “No!” Arturus screamed down to her. “Kelly, let him die. There’s no time.”

  But the sound of the Furies was too intense and there was no way that she could have heard him.

  A few of the dyitzu crawled onto a stone ledge. From there they threw their fire more rapidly and with better accuracy. Arturus redrew his pistol and fired. He dropped one, but the others moved so that the jut which had saved him earlier was blocking his line of fire.

  Kelly had been forced back into the fissure to avoid them.

  Galen was beside him now. “Go!”

  Arturus had no trouble hearing his father’s voice over the Furies’ call. “I can’t!” Arturus shouted back. “Kelly!”

  “She dies!”

  “I love her!” Arturus paused for a moment after he shouted it.

  Did I mean that?

  Galen’s face went pale. “Climb, Son.”

  “She can’t—”

  “I said climb!”

  Arturus moved up the wall and grabbed Aaron’s reaching hand. Harpsborough’s Lead Hunter pulled him up onto the ledge. Arturus looked back and saw Galen. His father had climbed down towards Kelly and Dakota. Galen could go no farther without exposing himself to the hail of dyitzu fire.

  He’ll die. He’ll die trying to save a girl I don’t even know if I love.

  The light of the Furies was illuminating the rocks around them now. Their faces were tortured, or horrifically angered, or both. One’s mouth was closed, but it opened, and she issued forth her call with a vehemence that Arturus had never before heard.

  Galen’s booming voice carried over the Furies. “Kelly listen, and listen closely. If you’re going to live, you’re going to have to do exactly what I say. Understand?”

  There was a pause, and Arturus could only hope that she had been able to reply.

  “Stay down,” Galen continued. “The Furies will reach the dyitzu first. When I shout ‘go,’ you have to climb, and you have to climb as fast as you can. You can’t stop to help each other. If you do, you will both die. You both have to make it. Understand?”

  There was another pause.

  “And does Dakota understand?” Galen asked.

  Another pause.

  “That’ll have to do.”

  The noise of the Furies shook the stones beneath Arturus. He could feel their calls vibrating up through his boots to hum in the hollow of his chest. He could even feel their sound in his teeth. The twin woman warriors were only moments away, their flowing trails of light spread out behind them. They had eight arms each and in the hand of every arm was a blade. They disappeared beneath the jut.

  “Now!” Galen boomed.

  Arturus watched his father scale the cliff at a pace he would not have thought possible.

  The dyitzu blood splattered freely out from behind the stone jut, showering down into the abyss. Kelly and Dakota came into view, and no fire harassed them. Arturus looked back to the dyitzu. They were spreading out along the cliff, climbing in all directions, struggling to save themselves from the relentless Furies. One dyitzu threw a fireball in some pitiful defense, but the fire passed right through the Fury’s light. The Fury howled so loudly that the dyitzu clutched its hands over its ears. It fell, but before it could drop more than even a few feet, two slashing blades of light tore it into pieces.

  Kelly was coming up faster than Dakota. Arturus dropped to his belly, reaching out with his hand. Galen lay down beside him.

  “When we get her, run with her back into the corridor,” Galen shouted. “I’ll get Dakota, if I can.”

  Kelly was close, twenty feet away. Fifteen.

  One of the Furies came over the jut. Four of her arms were stretched towards them, brandishing swords. The other four, the lower arms, had sheathed their blades and were pushing up off of the ro
cks as she soared upwards.

  Arturus stretched his arm out as far as he could.

  Ten feet. Five. He clutched at her wrist. Galen grabbed her, too, pulling her up so fiercely that Arturus wasn’t sure if he’d helped at all. Her momentum practically carried him back down the corridor. Arturus scrambled to his feet and ran with her away from the Erebus.

  Galen came after, dragging Dakota as he ran. But then he dropped the man. At first Arturus thought his father was abandoning Dakota, but then his mind processed what he’d seen.

  Galen had only dropped the top half of Dakota.

  The cool air of the Carrion sent shivers up Martin’s spine. It was a dark place, so dark that many of the rooms were entirely lost in shadow. He and his men dared not speak. Out of all of them, only Hidalgo was succeeding at being perfectly quiet. The rest, including Martin himself, had spent most of their time hunting in the wilds around Harpsborough. They’d had no fear, then, no reason to learn to stay this quiet.

  We were so arrogant. So prideful.

  Martin was doing his best. He kept his footfalls as soft as he could. He tightened his pack around his back in order to lessen its movement. He was careful not to let his clothing brush against any walls.

  The archways that led from one room to another were always built with huge violet keystones. He tried to memorize the path they’d taken, but the darkness and his own ever present fear made him unsure about their direction.

  “What’s that?” Huxley whispered.

  Martin hadn’t heard or seen anything. He raised his hand in a fist in the same way that Aaron had sometimes. His men stopped moving, freezing in place. Now that he was still, Martin could hear his own breathing. The cold was causing him to wheeze ever so slightly, and that single small whistle seemed to drown out every other noise.

  There didn’t seem to be anything out there.

  Martin turned to Huxley, whose eyes were narrowed in concentration. “What did you hear?”

  Huxley held up his rifle and shrugged. “I don’t know,” his soft voice reported. “Something. I swear it was something. Like scratches.”