GIVE IT TO ME.
Again, a splinter of doubt. He looked at his house, trying to find his mom, and the thought of her rocked him back, rekindling the anger. It was her fault he was here. She was the reason he was what he was.
Right?
THE HEART BELONGS TO ME.
Marlow turned back, the Devil towering over him, growing taller. Its arteries fused with those in the heart, blood pumped from the Devil straight into Marlow. Time and space seemed to shudder into fragments, the very stuff of the world—cells, molecules, and the quantum universes inside each individual atom—coming apart, unwinding.
THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN SO LONG AGO, the Devil said, its voice not outside but inside Marlow’s head, a flashbang going off in his skull. BEFORE THE VERY FIRST FLICKER OF MATTER, THE FIRST GRINDING INSTANCE OF TIME, IT WAS WRITTEN, JUST AS ALL THINGS ARE WRITTEN.
It reeled Marlow in like it meant to absorb him, pulling him against the shifting mirage of its body. A thousand tongues of skin fluttered out, taking hold of him. Its touch was like cement, as if he were being buried alive. More of them fed into the heart and he felt the gentlest of tugs as the Devil tried to pull it loose. Marlow didn’t fight it because this was who he was. This was why he was.
I am not real.
YOU ARE REAL TO ME, it said. YOU ONLY HAVE TO GIVE ME THE HEART, AND LOOK AT WHAT WE CAN DO.
Something slid up the base of his neck, inside the column of his spine, and the street blasted away into dust. He saw New York, a dead city, its people corrupted into ash, the buildings gutted. The rot and ruin spread outward, crossing the country in a wave of carnage. Demons teemed like ants, painting the streets with rent flesh. And through it all walked the Stranger—the Stranger and Marlow, held together by an unthinkable bond, a terrifying union of blood and old magic.
I DO NOT BELONG HERE, the Stranger told him, embracing him, pulling him closer. He felt his skin start to bubble and blister. I WAS TRAPPED HERE. BUT THIS UNIVERSE CANNOT HOLD ME FOREVER.
The vision showed a world crumbling into dust, the trees erupting, the crops withering, the people screaming even as their bodies disintegrated. Marlow watched animals throw themselves into the inferno just to avoid the creature who walked among them, and the final few people, the last of his species—no, not my species, never my species, I am not one of them—fight tooth and nail, and then fade, blown into spirals of ash that settled into calm. He watched, and he couldn’t help but smile, because the stillness that fell over the world was beautiful.
IT IS WHY I MADE YOU, it said. A UNION OF HOLY AND UNHOLY. THE WATCHMAKER WAS CLEVER, BUT EVERY DEAL CAN BE UNWOUND, EVERY CAGE CAN BE UNLOCKED. THIS WOULD NOT WORK IF YOU WERE HUMAN, IT WOULD NOT WORK IF YOU WERE A DEVIL. YOU HAD TO HAVE COME FROM ME, AND BECOME LIKE THEM. YOU ARE THE LINK BETWEEN OUR WORLDS, AND THE END OF YOUR WORLD IS THE BEGINNING OF MINE.
But how? Marlow asked, the words plucked from his head. Why?
WHEN MY KIND SPLIT, WHEN WE BECAME STRANGERS, WE LOST OUR STRENGTH, WE LOST ONE ANOTHER. WE LOST OUR ABILITY TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE UNIVERSES. THE WATCHMAKER WAS SUPPOSED TO HELP ME, BUT HE DECEIVED ME. THE ENGINE THAT HE BUILT TO KEEP ME ALIVE, TO MAKE ME STRONG AGAIN, BECAME A PRISON—NOT JUST FOR ME, BUT FOR ALL OF US.
Marlow saw it like he had seen it before, that entity which had roamed the universe even as it was forming, which split itself into seven shards of darkness to keep itself safe. The Engine hadn’t just contained this Stranger, he realized, it had threaded a linchpin through all of them.
WE YEARN FOR ONE ANOTHER. WE NEED ONE ANOTHER. WE WILL CARVE A HOLE IN EVERY UNIVERSE UNTIL WE FIND OURSELVES AGAIN.
The Stranger showed him: the world burned but it was just the beginning—the more the Stranger destroyed, the stronger it became. It would swallow planets, he saw. It would devour stars. It would become something infinitely more powerful than a black hole—a creature inside a storm that would rip a wound in the very fabric of time and space.
And eventually, when it had carved a hole deep enough, those universes would have nothing left to hold them. They would collapse down on one another like a house of cards.
AND WE WILL BE ONE. JUST LET GO OF THE HEART, CHILD, RELINQUISH IT TO ME.
It was almost too much to take in, almost enough to drive Marlow to madness, but again the Devil’s blood kept him sane, kept him safe. He was not mortal, he was not one of the insects that crawled around him. He was part of something immense, something that had played out long before the first star had sparked itself into being, something that would continue even after the last of them had sputtered into darkness.
He held out his hand to the Devil, offering it the heart. As he did so he laughed, and something echoed it, a noise that might have come from the Devil but that was too familiar, too much a part of his old world. Marlow ignored it, until it came again, as small as a needle but one that pierced through the thumping haze of the Devil’s blood. He peeled his face away from the mechanisms of the creature’s chest, saw the street, saw the houses, saw the raging skies.
And there was Donovan, the dog back on his feet, one front leg hanging like a broken branch. He was the only living thing in sight, standing fierce against the storm. He barked, but the aggression had gone. His eyes were big and round and wet and they fixed on Marlow with a look of such pain, such longing, that for a moment the darkness boiled away, the unbearable song of the Devil fading almost into silence.
It was as if the skies had parted, something golden beaming right into the center of Marlow’s mind. Before he could understand it, though, the Devil had pulled him close again, tugging at the heart, ripping it from his skin. The blood roared back into him, so loud.
It was just more proof. The dog hated him because he knew Marlow wasn’t human, because he knew Marlow was something rotten, something dragged from the foulest part of hell. Pan had said the same thing, that animals could sense evil. It was only telling him what he already knew, that he wasn’t real.
But it wasn’t always like that.
And there it was again, a guttering break of light right on the edge of his thoughts. He saw himself, much younger, rolling over the living room floor with the puppy his mom had just given him. It had licked him, bitten him with those dagger-sharp teeth, but only in play. He’d spent every single day with that dog and it had loved him.
He growled into the Devil, wrenched his head free. Something was jamming the mechanisms of his brain, his thoughts screaming as they fought to free themselves. Donovan just stood there, pacing back and forth as best he could with his bad leg, not barking now but whining.
GIVE IT TO ME.
The dog had trusted him.
The dog still trusted him.
No, he thought, and he spat the word up, howling it at the devil. “No!”
It carried a force of its own, the tainted blood giving the word power. It tore from his mouth and slammed into the Devil’s torso, the filaments of its skin rippling with the force of it. The creature pulled back, startled, and Marlow loosed a scream.
“It’s a lie!”
The Devil had recovered, was reeling him in, the blood hammering through the web of arteries that joined them.
IT IS A SMALL GIFT, BUT ONE YOU MUST GIVE. YOU ARE MY CHILD, YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MINE. LET US END THIS WORLD TOGETHER, LET US PIERCE THE SKIN OF THIS UNIVERSE AND FIND OUR WAY HOME. JUST GIVE IT TO ME.
He could feel the Devil’s rancid joy, it overwhelmed him, overpowered him. The world was nothing, he knew, just a rock that harbored a meaningless swarm of accidental life, a speck in the unspeakable vastness of the universes. What lay beyond this place was so much more, it was infinite, and beautiful, and silent. The idea of it vibrated through Marlow’s mind, through his soul; he felt as if he would melt beneath its glory.
IT IS OURS.
It would be. Marlow would see the impossible truth, he would be a child of eternity, a deity who roamed the space behind space.
But Donovan was still whining, the sound of it an anchor in rough seas, enou
gh to keep him steady, but at the same time enough to tear his mind apart. He cried out again, the power of his voice cracking the street, crumpling a house into rubble. The Devil was working at the heart, peeling it free.
SEE HOW EASY IT IS.
A handful of veins still joined the heart to Marlow and the blood coursed into him like fuel thrown on a fire. He wondered if his mom were still alive in there, or if she’d been blown to dust as well.
And the awful truth was that he didn’t care.
One way or another, she’d die today.
Everyone would die.
No!
He reached inside himself, to the boy he’d once been, and prepared to snuff him out like a candle.
IT IS THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING WONDERFUL, the Stranger said—Marlow said. Their voice was the same now. JUST LET GO.
He turned to the city before him, the one that he had once called home, the one where he had spent his entire life, ready to scream it all away.
But Donovan was still there.
The candle flickered, burned again. That was his dog. That was his Donovan. And whatever Marlow was now, he hadn’t always been this way.
It’s a lie, he said. It’s a lie.
AND WHAT DOES IT MATTER IF IT IS?
“It matters,” he said, clenching his hand again, feeling the energy inside it, inside him. The Devil’s heart beat, and beat, and beat, a neutron star of darkness, powerful enough to carve a hole in the universe.
Only it wasn’t the Devil’s heart anymore.
“It matters,” he said.
And once again, he opened his fist.
WAR OF THE WORLDS
It was like he’d been holding a pulled bow, an arrow of black light pulsing from his hand and hitting the Devil. A cave opened up in the myriad parts of its face and it grunted in shock, staggering back. The storm gyred around them, like they were in the eye of a cyclone. The street was disintegrating, pieces of wood, of stone, of asphalt, of people rising into the tar-black sky.
Marlow held out his other hand, his whole arm trembling with the power inside it. The Devil’s heart hung there like a tumor, but it was still beating hard, filling him with darkness and with strength.
It doesn’t care, Marlow understood. It doesn’t care who uses it.
It was Marlow’s heart now.
He opened his fingers and the air fractured, a bolt of inverse lightning slamming into the Devil. The thunder was deafening, kicking up a shock wave of dust, and Marlow pushed through it. His face ached, and it was because he was grinning. The thrill of it was like nothing he had ever experienced. He knew he could jump up right now and burn his way into space. He knew he could punch a hole in the street and crack the world in two.
The heart thumped, and thumped, and thumped, like it was chanting his name. Mar-low. Mar-low. Mar-low.
THIS STORY HAS BEEN WRITTEN FOR TOO LONG, the Devil roared, finding its feet again. IT CANNOT BE CHANGED.
Marlow grabbed hold of the web of veins that still joined them, tearing. They came free from the Devil’s chest with a series of wet pops and it howled, clutching at its flapping skin.
IT IS MINE, it said, reaching out with those too-long arms. YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT IT. NOTHING.
Nothing without it.
But with it he was a god.
This time he didn’t open his hand, he clenched it into a fist, striking the Devil in the machinery of its face. It was an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object, the concussive force of it juddering out through the air, scattering pieces of asphalt. A jarring pain rode up Marlow’s arm even past the cry of the blood. The Devil moved in, its fingers wrapping themselves around his throat, tightening like a noose. Marlow’s stomach lurched as he was plucked from the ground, the Devil staring up at him with the rot holes in its face.
It punched him into the ruined street, through it, burying him grave-deep. Then he was in the air, long enough for a single breath before the Devil slammed him down again, and again, each time the darkness settling a little deeper into his thoughts.
YOU ARE NOTHING, the Devil said.
A sudden agony tore through his body, radiating from his arm—a pain the likes of which he didn’t think was possible. He stared through the haze, through the mask of black blood, seeing the Devil harvesting the heart from his arm. It came free reluctantly, trailing wormlike veins that twisted and thrashed.
NOTHING.
“No!” Marlow yelled, grabbing hold of it. It rocked between them, pulsing dark light. He was powerful, but the Devil still had Ostheim’s blood inside it, it was still too strong. It was pulling the heart toward the cavity in its chest, its flesh peeling open to make room for it.
Marlow lunged forward and the Devil lost its balance, falling. The heart bounced off its chest, and in the confusion Marlow managed to gain purchase. He plunged his other hand into the hole in the Devil’s ribs, into the impossible coldness there. There was nothing but darkness to grab on to but he pulled at it, ripping out chunks of oily matter. The Devil arched its back, uttered a noise that might have been a scream, but whose frequency Marlow couldn’t detect.
He ripped, and he pulled, and he punched, pounding the Stranger’s face over and over until its ancient skull crumbled and the mess of its brains slopped out.
Only then did he rock back and howl into the sky. The heart swung beneath him, still connected. It was already reeling itself back into place, those filaments reattaching themselves to his skin. For a second, he thought about pulling them free, but he knew that if he did that his injuries would be too great. He would die right here, on what was left of his street.
And even after everything he’d been through, everything he’d seen, the idea of slipping into that darkness forever was too much.
The Stranger twitched beneath him, the subtlest of tremors. Its body was flattened like roadkill. It couldn’t be moving, it had to be dead. And yet it twitched again, a bolt of dark lightning searing up into the storm, the clap of thunder knocking Marlow away. There was another sound, too, a deep, booming pulse that could only be one thing.
Laughter.
The Stranger’s corpse sat up, crushed so thin it was like a drawing etched on paper. Its top half peeled away from the earth, swaying there, the ruin of its face slowly turning to Marlow.
YOU CANNOT KILL ME, it said. WE WERE NOT MADE TO DIE THIS WAY.
It rose like a puppet, more of that lightless lightning crackling up into the sky. Its face folded and refolded, shaping itself. It took a step toward him, unfurling its arm, stretching it until the fossil of its hand sat right before him.
NO MORE GAMES. IT IS TIME.
Marlow shook his head, forcing himself back to his feet. The Devil’s heart beat.
YOU CANNOT DENY WHAT YOU ARE.
Marlow knew. He could feel the heart thump against him, and he knew that it was his now.
What did that make him, if not the Devil?
And suddenly, he knew what he had to do.
He lunged forward, sinking his teeth into the shifting skin of the Devil’s face. It came away surprisingly easily, tasting like he’d just chowed down on a month-old corpse. He spat, gagging, then he did it again, aiming for its throat.
The Stranger pulled back, blood spraying from its neck. Marlow didn’t give it a chance to recover, his head snapping forward like a viper’s, his teeth sinking into its throat again. Blood flowed into his mouth and he swallowed, drinking it down, black light pouring from the wounds, fizzing up into the storm.
Marlow drank deep, devouring the Devil like it had devoured Ostheim. The horror of it was so immense that he lost himself to it. There was just his hunger, and the flesh beneath him, and he grunted and growled and snarled his way through it until what lay there was just a garbage bag of spilled flesh, motionless and forgotten.
He stood, and it was as if he pulled the world after him, as if it would change the direction of its orbit if he only willed it. Nothing was the same. Even though the sky was dark with cloud he could
see the stars there, billions of them. He could see the sun, could see past the blinding glare of it into the atomic machinery that kept it burning. He looked down, through the empty mess of the Devil, saw the rock, and the history of that rock, the billions of years that had brought it here. And beneath it the molten flesh of the world, and the iron heart of the planet that whispered a strange, beautiful song.
The world was nothing. Time was nothing. He could wait here for a thousand years and it would be a blink of his eye. Or he could stop it altogether and live a hundred lifetimes in the stillness he left behind. It was all his to love.
It was his to destroy, too, if he wished.
The thought of it released a charge of energy, one that burned its way through a house down the street, shaking it to atoms. Marlow laughed, and even this was a weapon, carving a trench through the exposed foundations, turning the earth into a memory of dust.
Somebody up the street made a break for it, an old woman running from her front door. He didn’t do anything, didn’t move, he just thought it and she burst into flame. There wasn’t even time for her to collapse to the asphalt before she exploded, a concussive thump casting her ash up above the rooftops.
The horror, the joy, pulsed out of him as an animal roar, a sonic explosion that plowed through the street, which tore away asphalt and stone and earth and pipes, turning it into a tsunami. The ground cracked like an earthquake had struck, one side slumping so much that the houses there collapsed into themselves.
And over it all, the heart beat and beat and beat.
It would beat in him forever.
Marlow lifted his arm, brought the heart toward his chest. More of those eel-like veins slid from it, burrowing into his skin, curling themselves around his ribs. He felt them brush against his own, human heart—no, it was never human, I was never human—rooting there.
The storm hung over him like a crown, a cloak of dust and wind and ash flowing after him as he began to walk. A distant part of him screamed that this was his street, that somewhere here was his mom, his dog. Then he remembered that they were probably dead, that he had probably killed them both, and suddenly all there was inside him was that age-old call—the heart needed him to punch a hole in this universe so that it could slide into the next, so that it could be reunited with the other impossible shards of itself.
Hellwalkers Page 23
