The heart was pulling itself from Marlow’s chest.
It looked like a giant insect, the veins hardening into limbs as it wrenched itself free. Something opened up in the knotted mass of tissue, a gaping hole that might have been a mouth. It was growing, swelling, as it peeled out the last of its arteries and flopped onto the stone floor.
Marlow screamed again, more blood than noise. He curled onto his side, cradling the mess of his chest. The heart-beast was trying to push itself up on those legs, more of them bristling from its greasy flanks. It was the size of a small dog now, its mouth working at the air like it was trying to speak. Its clockwork pieces caught the light, glinting like the metal parts of her own skin.
Pan waited for the creature to turn and bolt, to make a break for freedom. Only, it didn’t. It grew like a wormbag, bladelike limbs bursting free of its rancid shell, muscles twisting beneath its skin. Rot holes burst open and she could see eyeballs bulging there, dozens of them.
She had time to swear, and then it was coming right for her.
LAST STAND
Marlow was in pieces. He didn’t even have to look to know how bad it was. He had his hands to his chest and he could feel the holes there, like he’d been riddled with bullets. Blood was pouring from the wounds, cold and hot at the same time, and when he pushed his fingers to himself he could feel bone, and something deeper, something that was never supposed to see the light.
He didn’t care, though, because however bad his injuries were, the fact that he could feel them at all meant the heart had gone.
The pain was a blowtorch held against his eyes but he could feel the corrupted blood inside him, pumped by his own battered heart. It was powerful, and already he could feel it knitting him back together, repairing the wounds. There were too many holes in him for it to save his life, he was pretty sure about that. But there was enough to see this through.
Behind the supernova of his agony he heard a scream. Somehow, he managed to roll onto his side, peeling open his eyes to see Pan. She was retreating across the platform, and there had to have been something wrong with Marlow’s vision, because it looked like there was a shadow chasing after her, a creature so dark its shape had to have been cut from his retinas.
Only when it reared up—taller than a man, as fat as a pregnant sow, its jointed legs cleaving through the air—did he understand what it was. It was still pulsing, its flanks bulging and splitting with each beat, more limbs slopping out of its belly like newly birthed snakes. Pan had tripped onto her ass, looking like she was about to drop dead on the spot. She never took her eyes off it, she just bunched her fists and gave it a look that would have been enough to blow a lesser evil into pieces.
It slammed its front legs down and Marlow moved without thinking, stretching out an arm. The heart wasn’t part of him anymore, but the Devil’s blood still ran in his veins and when he opened his fingers a weak surge of energy slipped loose. It scudded along the ground, thumping into the ass end of the heart. It was barely enough to nudge it, but the creature swung around anyway, its cluster of rotting eyes rolling wildly.
“Yeah,” Marlow grunted. “Still got it, asswipe.”
Pan had made it back onto her feet and she had a chunk of rock in her hand, pulled from the fractured platform. She brought it down on the top of the creature’s head and it squealed, backing away. She lifted the weapon and threw herself at it, but this time it saw her coming, snapping out a leg and swiping her feet from under her.
She spun, landing on her back, uttering a long, low groan. Marlow dug deep, flicking his hand and seeing another channel of inverse light cut through the air. The heart scuttled to the side, then it was charging at him, its bladed feet carving trenches in the stone.
He cradled his chest, sitting up, everything going dark.
Don’t pass out.
Fluid leaked through his fingers but a thick, oil-black scab had grown over the worst of the injuries, the blood patching him up. He risked a look, still seeing a glimpse of rib.
Do not pass out.
There was enough of him left, though. He lifted both hands, the heart looming over him, its limbs raised like scorpion tails. The blood could give him any power, all he had to do was think of one. He cast the charge out like he was throwing a baseball—not a pulse of darkness this time but a ball of burning plasma. It hit the heart in its open mouth, spreading like napalm. The creature was squealing again, batting pathetically at its own skin.
Marlow tried to get to his feet, failed. He willed another attack but his batteries were running low, the blood deserting him like rats from a sinking ship. He managed to conjure a forked blast of blue flame but it went wide, arcing into the ceiling.
A scream, not from the heart this time but from Pan. She had thrown herself on it, something glinting in her palm. Whatever it was, it was powerful, chunks of flesh and blood erupting from the heart like she’d blasted it with a shotgun. She stabbed it again and this time the blade spun from her hands, scraping across the ground.
A crossbow bolt, Marlow saw, carved from the Engine. Pan had brought it here a lifetime ago, he remembered, to fight Mammon.
Pan ducked beneath the creature’s limbs, running for the bolt. She didn’t make it, an obsidian blade suddenly erupting from her stomach. Her mouth turned into a perfect O, then she collapsed into herself, the heart tossing her away like she was garbage. She landed, rolled, close enough to Marlow for him to be able to grab her and pull her to him.
The heart was recovering, the wound in its side bubbling closed. It hauled its ugly bulk toward them, more of those daggered limbs poised to strike.
Marlow could hear splashing from the Black Pool, knew there were more demons on the way. And just like that he understood it was over. They had lost.
The anger was powerful, but it was brief. He just didn’t have enough left of himself to give to it. Pan groaned and he pulled her close, her head resting on his stomach. Blood flowed from her torso, so red, the brightest thing in sight.
“Sorry,” he said, to her, to everyone.
She shook her head, her face etched with pain. Marlow looked past her to the heart, to this impossible thing that had crawled through time and space, that had devoured worlds and pulled holes in universes. And he knew that they had never stood a chance, not really. Like the Devil had told him, this story had been written too long ago.
The heart reared up in front of them and Marlow looked away from it. He wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of watching him beg. He turned to Pan instead, ran a hand through her hair, and offered her the last thing he had to give: a smile.
Wherever they were going next, at least they’d be together.
He heard it before he felt it, the butcher’s slice of metal through meat. Pan jolted in his arms but there was nothing there, no alien limb puncturing her skin. Marlow looked at himself, wondering if the rolling waves of agony had masked his own end.
Then he saw it, a gleaming blade of dull metal jutting out of the heart’s groaning maw. It was coated in black blood, vanishing with a twist before slicing through again, this time bursting out of the side of its face.
“Die, puta!”
The heart roared, trying to turn. But it had made itself too big, struggling like an injured bear. The blade was wrenched from its face and somebody appeared from behind it, somebody dressed in rags and dust and blood, somebody armed with a ten-foot spear of Engine metal.
“Night!” Marlow yelled.
The girl pulled the spear back like she was a viper, then plunged it forward. The creature’s blood hissed as the metal touched it, its mouth uttering a gargled howl that was almost human.
Pan had managed to roll herself away, scuttling crablike across the ground to where the crossbow bolt lay. She scooped it up, fumbling it from her blood-slicked fingers, tried again. The heart-beast groaned but Marlow barely heard it. Another sound rocked the air, a screaming roar like there was a 747 hurtling toward him. The cavern shook, more chunks of rock raining down.
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Night sliced through the heart-beast, pulling the blade free with a gout of black blood. It punched one of its scorpion-tail limbs at her and she ducked, swinging the spear down and slicing clean through it. She didn’t stop, just turned in one fluid motion and jabbed the blade back in. Pan was there too, shanking the monster with everything she had.
A cleft seemed to open in the air overhead, a bolt of lightning that didn’t fade away but just stayed there. Something that wasn’t light and wasn’t darkness bled from it, leaking into the room. It was a glitch in reality, so impossible that Marlow couldn’t look at it. Another tore through the ground next to the Black Pool, crackling and spitting. The cavern was shaking so much now that Marlow thought it might give way beneath them, bury them alive.
“Hey,” he said, pulling himself up, crouching because he couldn’t trust himself to stand. The heart was struggling, spilling its guts, but it was repairing itself almost as quickly, bulging shapes pushing themselves from its wounds, sprouting more limbs, more eyes. “Hey,” Marlow said again, a third rift tearing the air in two like it was a sheet of paper. “Guys, we gotta move.”
Night whipped the spear around in an arc, slicing open half a dozen of its eyes like they were eggs. Then she grabbed Pan, hauling her away. Another of those tears in reality cracked the Black Pool in two, a color that Marlow had never seen before leaching from the rift.
“What is that?” Night yelled over the roar, the two of them struggling to Marlow’s side. It was like the world had forgotten how to hold itself together, like it was eating itself from the inside.
And suddenly he understood what was happening.
Night had crossed back into the world. She had escaped hell. The deal that Marlow had made with the Devil had been fulfilled.
And the gateway between worlds was collapsing.
“Ah, crappity crap,” he said, turning so fast the world seemed to do a 360 around him. He lunged forward, another crack appearing in the air, just hanging there and bleeding its absence into the cave. It was pumping out a noise he couldn’t make any sense of, like every single person on the planet had opened their mouth and cried out.
They reached the steps, Night and Pan taking the lead. Pan was losing a lot of blood but she wasn’t giving in. Marlow glanced over his shoulder, saw the heart-beast pulling itself after them, scuttling like a giant roach. Its face was just eyes and a gaping mouth and yet somehow the panic was still there. It knew what was happening.
“Go!” Marlow shouted. But they weren’t going to make it. The heart-beast was gaining fast. Night stood her ground, bracing the haft of the spear against the bottom step and angling the blade out. Marlow shook his hands, trying to find one last drop of power there. He flicked them, a mist of plasma crackling over his fingers like it didn’t know what to do with itself.
But he knew.
The heart-beast was there, towering over them. Night swore, thrusting the spear at the creature’s stomach. Marlow grabbed it, too, channeling the charge down the metal shaft—a raging torrent of fire that made the weapon glow red hot. If the heart-beast saw it, it didn’t stop, running right into the blade. Marlow fell away, Night dancing back as the creature’s limbs reached for her. The heart-beast was impaled, its insides sizzling and steaming, its mouth open in a soundless howl.
Marlow didn’t stop to see what it did next, limping after the others. The cavern was coming apart, the air shattering like glass. The pressure was changing, wind whistling into the cracks. Marlow stopped as he reached the vault door, sucking in scraps of oxygen.
The pool was folding into itself like there was a black hole beneath the surface, the ground fracturing into dust as it was sucked inside. The motion of the air was stronger now, a current that pulled everything toward that churning mass of dark water. Farther out in the cavern, the Engine was dismantling itself—giant sections of machinery crumbling as they were hauled toward the pool. The heart-beast was pulling at the spear with every one of its limbs but it was stuck fast, fused there.
Marlow ran, managing three steps before he slowed into a walk. The thought of the staircase was almost too much but Night and Pan were waiting for him, and the sight of them there gave him strength.
“Last one up,” Pan started, pausing while she caught her breath. “Is a rotten egg.”
The last one up would be dead, and Marlow set off, the three of them staying close, helping one another. The entire stairwell was fracturing, the wind screaming past their ears as it flowed down to the cavern. It was making so much noise that Marlow didn’t hear the roars from the heart-beast until it was almost right beneath them. He peered over the banister, seeing the monstrosity struggling up, the spear clanging against the rails.
But they were close, he knew that. He could see light up above, streaming into the stairwell. The day was up there, and it was waiting for them. And it was that that did it—not the threat of being trapped here, not the fear of death, not the last vestiges of the Devil’s strength that flowed through him. It was the thought of stepping out into the warmth, into the glorious heat of summer, that drove him up the last few flights and out into the corridor.
He slung Pan’s arm over his shoulder, dragging her toward the Red Door. The floor was giving way beneath his feet, festering into rot, and sand, and ash. He plowed through it, not stopping even when he heard the screams behind him, the heart-beast crashing out of the stairwell. He didn’t stop until he’d opened the Red Door and tumbled through, sprawling in the dirt.
Night was the last one through and she grabbed the handle, pausing long enough for them all to look back inside. The Devil’s heart—or what was left of it—was bouldering for the exit, struggling against the wind, against the disintegrating world. One of those impossible whipcracks of lightning sliced through the elevator, chunks of metal and rock flowing down into a widening gyre. Another cut the corridor in half, slicing right through the heart, dissecting it. One half of it fell away like it had been turned to stone, but the rest of it kept going, a single eye bulging from the foaming mess of its face, its mouth drooping, useless.
“Close the door,” Pan said.
“Wait,” said Marlow.
The far end of the corridor was a whirlpool of darkness, a vortex that devoured everything. The heart-beast was losing purchase, its limbs dragging through the dust, grabbing at the crumbling walls. But still it pushed on, just twenty yards away now, howling silently. That single eye stared, and stared.
“Close the goddamned door, Night,” said Pan.
Lightning cracked again, a rift in reality just on the other side of the door—too close for comfort.
“I have to see,” Marlow said. “I have to make sure.”
The heart took another step, then it began to slide back, dragged by an invisible hand. It fought for all of a second, then it gave in. It rolled away, sucked into the chaos.
It was gone.
Marlow felt himself slide toward the door, the maelstrom pulling them in.
“Close it!” he screamed, but the wind was too strong, Night struggling, losing her footing. Marlow got up, ran to her. He hooked his fingers around the side of the door, pulling. Then Pan was there too, screaming against the pain as she fought to close it. The Nest was almost gone, swallowed by the storm that raged inside. But they pulled, they pulled, they pulled.
Until the Red Door clicked shut.
HELLPUTTERBACKERERS
Silence, other than their ragged breaths, and the deafening drum of Marlow’s heart.
The Red Door rattled once, then fell still. They waited for it to open, to be ripped out of its frame by a cyclone that wanted to devour the world. They waited for it to open, the heart-beast clawing its way out, its limbs scything through the air, through them. They waited for it to open, the evil inside the Red Door ushering darkness into the day.
But it was just a door, and it stayed closed.
Until Night reached out and turned the handle.
“Whoa!” yelled Marlow from where he had co
llapsed to the ground. “What are—”
It opened into nothing—not darkness, not light, but something else. Then even that, too, began to fade. And there was just a warehouse, empty other than some metal shelves and a carpet of dead pigeons.
“Is it gone?” whispered Pan. She was lying on the floor holding her stomach, her eyes screwed closed. She looked like she’d been drawn in grayscale, like she hadn’t quite made it back to the real world. Only the metal pieces of her had brightness and color, and they glinted in the sun. Marlow glanced up, the day as bright as ever, no sign of the storm aside from the carnage it had caused. Pieces of debris still rained down but only quietly, like they didn’t want to disturb the peace.
“It’s gone,” Marlow said.
“You think it’s in Paris?” Night asked.
There was a chance, Marlow thought. The actual Engine lay there, deep beneath the streets. But something told him that even there the Devil was dead. The gateway had been destroyed, had been utterly obliterated. And didn’t that mean the entire Engine? That was the gateway, after all. Everything from the Red Door to the Black Pool had been designed to open a breach between Earth and hell, so it made sense that everything between them was gone for good.
“Old magic,” said Pan, still not moving. “The Red Door, the Liminal. It kept the explosion inside. I never thought that bastard thing would save me.”
“But has it gone?” Marlow asked. “You know, for good?”
Nobody answered. How could they know? Like the Devil had said, this was a story that had been written an eternity ago, one of infinite complexity. For all they knew, the Devil was lying dormant, ready to build itself a new Engine. And what about the other pieces of this creature, whatever it was? The six other Strangers? Were they murdering their way through their own universes, searching for this place? Would they carve their way through the sky one day and crush them all to dust?
Or maybe, just maybe, the Devil was dead.
Hellwalkers Page 26
