The grey mists of the Nether Lands smothered him for a few seconds, then cleared to reveal a dark and barren landscape, spread out like a blanket at the world’s gloomiest picnic. From way up high he was able to pick out some detail of the land below him. There was the River Styx. There was the waterfall. And there, way off in the distance was Hades and the flickering lights of Eyedol.
Zac fell. Down towards the sludgy water. Down towards the blood-stained welcome sign. Down towards Hell itself.
He fell.
He smiled.
And he kept on falling.
E LANDED ON his feet and the ground rippled around him.
He had passed through the roof like a ghost and come to a stop in a cave-like room with lava flowing through gaps in the rocky floor. The wailing and the sobbing of the damned bounced like squash balls off the walls around him.
The worst of the wailing, though, seemed to be piped in through hidden speakers. There were only thirty or forty people in the room itself, and most of those were standing in small groups looking worried. Only two or three people were actually weeping, but the sound effects suggested thousands more of them were hiding round the corner.
There was demonic laughter too, and the crackling of deadly flames. Small log fires burned here and there around the cave, but the roar of the inferno was also coming from the speakers.
There was only one actual demon in the room, as far as Zac could tell. He wore gold hot pants and roller skates, and was bare from the waist up. The demon looked up from a clipboard and a flicker of recognition crossed his face. “Oi,” he said. “I know you. You’re the one what shot me.”
The demon trundled awkwardly over on his skates. “Thought you were the big man, waving that gun about,” he spat. “Thought you were the big I am. Not so tough now, are you? Not so tough n—”
Zac formed his left hand into the shape of a spearhead and jabbed it upward into the soft area just above the demon’s right armpit.
“Ooyah,” hissed the creature, and then half his face went slack, and half his body went limp, and all of him slumped to the ground in a whimpering heap.
Zac stepped over him and raced towards a door set into one of the rocky walls. He’d barely got his fingers on the handle when someone called out to him.
“Um... excuse me?”
He turned to find a middle-aged woman waving to him from one of the worried little groups. “We were just wondering... what should we do?” she asked. “It’s just that we’re all quite new to this and...” She ran out of steam then, and someone from another group took over.
“Should we just hang about here or what?” asked a man just a few years older than Zac. “Only no one’s really told us anything since I arrived and, well, between you and me, I’m getting a bit sick of it.”
There was murmured agreement from the rest of the damned. Zac sighed. He didn’t have time for this.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, are any of you murderers or anything?”
A few questioning glances were exchanged. Then, at the back of the room, a solitary man in a long dirty raincoat raised a hand.
“Right, well, you stay here, then,” Zac told him. The man tutted quietly, but sat down on a rock and did his best to make himself comfortable. “The rest of you do what you like,” Zac shrugged. “Try to get out if you want. If you can make it upriver there’s a nightclub. I’d imagine it’s more fun than here. Tell the owner Zac sent you.” He moved to open the door. “Oh, and tell him I said sorry about his boat.”
The door led out into the reception area, where the secretary was sitting at her desk, knitting furiously and gazing down at a double-page spread in Your Hellhound. She looked up as Zac entered and the clicking of her needles stopped.
“All right?” he said. He set the backpack down on the floor, unzipped it and began rummaging inside.
“Um...” said the demon. “Um...”
“Sorry about earlier,” he told her. “You know, shooting you in the face and stuff?”
“Um...”
“We were trying to be stealthy, that’s why I did it.” He took out a couple of small plastic guns and stuck them in his waistband, then he removed a much larger gun from the bag and set it on the floor. Next he removed the little sack of Argus eyes and put them in his pocket.
Finally, he took out the bomb. It was a simple thing. He’d bought it from Geneva Jones on his way to the toyshop. She’d agreed to give him a discount to make up for selling him out to the Monk. It was all just business in the end.
The bomb itself was relatively harmless. Relatively harmless compared to other bombs, at least. It contained only a very small amount of explosive. Four two-litre bottles of water were attached to it, making the whole thing awkwardly heavy. Zac slung the strap of the large gun over his shoulder, leaving his hands free to carry the bomb.
“But I’m not trying to be stealthy any more,” he said, kicking the now empty backpack into the corner of the room. “You’ve got an alarm system in here.”
The demon nodded. “Um...”
“You’d probably better press it.”
The demon nodded again. Her finger slowly went to a button beneath her desk. Zac kicked open the door just as the alarm bells began to ring.
All round the first circle, doors began to open, and the alarm was briefly drowned out by the screams and howls of the damned. A green and purple demon with ape-like arms was unlucky enough to step out from the closest door.
“What’s all the racket?” he demanded, before the tip of Zac’s shoe came up sharply between his legs. The demon clutched his groin and dropped to his knees, then he toppled sideways, groaning, on to the floor.
More demons poured from more doors up ahead. Others still emerged from the rooms behind him. Zac looked down at the floors below and saw that they too, were brimming with monsters, all gesturing angrily in his direction.
With a flick of a switch, Zac primed the bomb and a three-second countdown began. He tossed the thing out over the frosted-glass barrier and into the big space in the centre of the rings. The bomb flipped twice, then began to fall.
It had barely travelled three or four metres downwards when the explosive charge detonated. The bottles ruptured, spraying a rain of holy water in all directions. Those demons unlucky enough to be hit by the spray began to scream as their hides sizzled and blistered.
“Wow,” said Zac. “So that’s what it does to them.”
The din of the demons’ screams echoed round the corridors of Hell. The spray had only hit a small percentage of them, but their thrashing and howling and begging for help had quickly plunged the whole place into chaos.
The demon he’d kicked was still lying on the ground, holding his crotch and trying not to vomit on the carpet. He gave a high-pitched whimper when Zac hauled him to his feet.
“The tenth circle. Can you take me there?”
The demon shook his head. Zac took one of the smaller water pistols from his waistband and jammed it in the demon’s mouth. “Holy water,” he explained. He cocked his head and listened to the screaming from the lower floors. “But then you probably guessed that. I’m going to ask you again. The tenth circle. Can you take me there?”
The demon shook his head again. Zac squeezed the trigger, just enough for a single drop of water to dribble into the monster’s mouth. The demon’s eyes went wide as his tongue began to sizzle and burn.
“Tenth circle,” Zac urged. “Yes or no?”
“’Es!” the demon squeaked. “’Es!”
Zac glanced around the corridor. Those demons who hadn’t been hit by the spray were shoving past the others, making their way around to him. They’d be on him at any moment.
“Then do it,” he growled. “Now!”
There was a blip and Zac found himself standing in the room he’d been in earlier. There were the chains that had bound him and Angelo. There was the reclining chair. But it looked like a tornado had ripped through the place.
The chai
r was in pieces. The light that had been mounted above it lay smashed and broken on the floor. A gaping hole had been torn through one wall. From beyond it, Zac could hear shouts of anger and yelps of panic, and the roars of something monstrous.
The captive demon watched him, his eyes bulging, the gun still wedged in his mouth. Zac carefully removed the pistol. “Sorry about that,” he said, then he drove a left hook across the demon’s cheek, knocking him out cold. “And that.”
He looked over to the hole in the wall. “Right, then,” he announced to no one in particular. “I’m guessing this way.”
Just as he reached the gap, something large and scaly came hurtling backwards through it. With a cry of pain, Haures smashed through a stainless-steel worktop and thudded hard against the wall. Black blood oozed from the duke’s nose and mouth. He coughed violently, mumbled, “That’s more like it,” then slid sideways on to the floor.
Zac cautiously poked his head round the edge of the hole and peered into a room larger than the one he was in. It was filled with what was probably until very recently state-of-the-art medical equipment, but which was now little more than scrap metal bent into a variety of interesting shapes.
A large metal box, which may once have been a prison cell, stood in the centre of the room. One of its walls had been torn away, the others were scorched and black with soot. Sparks rained down from a broken electric light that hung from the high ceiling. The other lights flickered, more off than on.
Three of the demons in surgical masks chittered excitedly as they launched themselves into the shadows beneath the broken light. A bellow of rage rocked the room and two of the demons were hurled from the darkness at terrifying speed. Their spindly bodies went krik as they broke against the wall.
Zac looked on as the third little demon came darting out of the gloom, its eyes wide open with terror. It made it four steps before a hand reached out of the dark and swatted it to the floor. The demon screamed as the hand dragged it back into the shadows, and then the screams became muffled before abruptly coming to a stop.
Silence followed, broken only by a burp from the darkness.
Zac stepped through the hole in the wall. “Hey, Angelo,” he said, doing what he could to control the shake in his voice. “Hoped I’d find you here.”
Breath hissed in the shadows. A growl rumbled at the back of a throat.
“I came back. You know, to rescue you. Like I said. Because, well, I was thinking and—”
A jet of flame crackled towards him, forcing Zac to throw himself sideways. He rolled expertly and took cover behind the buckled remains of a metal wall. The flame had come from high up, somewhere near the domed ceiling itself. Zac raised his eyes. The ceiling was ten metres high, maybe more. Higher than Angelo’s demon form had been. Much, much higher.
There was a clatter from the hole in the wall and Haures came staggering through. The Duke of Hell glowered gleefully up into the darkness and extended his arms out wide.
“Come, my boy,” he cried. “Come to Uncle Haures!”
Zac kept out of sight. He ducked down low and watched as the shadows parted revealing the Angelo-demon in all his true horror.
“Oh, come on,” Zac muttered as the monstrous shape stepped into view. “You have got to be kidding me.”
NGELO LOOKED PREHISTORIC. Not like a dinosaur, exactly, more like the thing that had killed all the dinosaurs off. And probably without even trying.
He stood seven or eight metres tall, with his horns adding eighty or ninety more centimetres on top. The horns scraped along the ceiling as he lumbered forward, his scaly red knuckles trailing across the floor, each thunderous footstep shaking the room.
“Yes,” cackled Haures. “Yes! What a specimen you are! What a specimen you— Oof!”
The back of Angelo’s hand swatted Haures across the room. The Duke of Hell was laughing with delight as he crunched into the metal barricade Zac was hiding behind. Both Haures and the barricade tumbled on for several metres, before rolling to a stop.
Suddenly exposed, Zac straightened up and locked eyes with the Angelo-demon. Bones grew like tusks from the monster’s neck and jaw. The fire in his eyes burned with such ferocity it looked like the whole top half of his head was ablaze. He snorted like a racehorse after a sprint, and each time he did, rings of black smoke blew from his wide nostrils.
“What did they do to you?” said Zac softly.
“We set him free,” said Haures, limping in Zac’s direction. “Impressive, isn’t he?” He looked the intruder up and down. “How did you get back down here, by the way?”
Zac didn’t answer.
Haures shrugged. “They tried to neuter him,” he continued. “Up there. They tried to smother his dark side, kill it off. But you can’t kill that. How can you kill that? All they did was bottle it up. And all we had to do was take the lid off.”
The Angelo-demon’s fist swung down at them. Zac and Haures leaped in opposite directions and the knuckles shattered the floor where they’d stood.
“And this is what you’re left with!” Zac shouted. “He’s out of control. He’ll tear the whole place apart.”
“We’ll train him,” Haures smirked. “We’ll break him, and we’ll keep breaking him until he does exactly as we say.”
“Then you’re doing just what Heaven did,” Zac said. He ducked as Angelo’s Boa Constrictor-like tail whistled by above his head. “You’re only letting him be one thing – but now you’re bottling up his angel side.”
Haures snorted. “So once in a blue moon he’ll lose control and do some really impressive charity work. I can live with that.”
The demon duke feinted left as Angelo’s tail snapped down at him. “He’s already learned some basic commands,” said Haures, recovering quickly. “Watch this.”
Haures stabbed a clawed finger in Zac’s direction. “Angelo!” he barked. The Angelo-demon’s ears pricked up. It gazed down at the much smaller demon, unblinking. Haures smiled. “Kill.”
Slowly, like a shadow at sunset, Angelo’s gaze went to Zac.
“Don’t,” Zac said. “Don’t do this, Angelo. You know me. Try to rememb—”
A guttural howl drowned out the rest of Zac’s words. The Angelo-demon charged, claws swiping, fire spewing from his cavernous throat. Zac rolled, ducked, turned, ran. All around him was the crackling of the flames and the cackling of demonic laughter and the steady boom boom boom of footsteps chasing him down.
The crumpled jail cell stood just ahead. Zac powered forward. If he could make it there, he could buy himself a few seconds. If he could buy himself a few seconds, he could come up with a plan. And if he could come up with a plan, then maybe this wouldn’t have to go down as the most botched rescue attempt in the history of the human race.
The pointed tip of Angelo’s tail streaked by him. There was a nerve-splitting screeching sound as the tail tore through a metal wall, and then the entire cell was jerked up into the air.
Zac saw the shadow of the metal box grow larger around him. He hurled himself out of the way just as the cell was brought smashing down against the floor.
Clambering back to his feet, Zac swung the large water gun into his hands. “I didn’t want to do this,” he said, taking aim. “But you’re not leaving me any choice.”
He squeezed the trigger. A jet of holy water hit the Angelo-demon square in the chest, but the monster didn’t react.
“Immune to the effects of holy water,” roared Haures. “This just gets better and better!”
Angelo brought a foot stomping down towards Zac’s head. Zac avoided it, but only just, and with each miss he made, Angelo became angrier and more aggressive. If Zac was going to take the demon down, he had to do it now.
He ran from the giant demon, not trying to escape, but trying to make space. As he ran, he dug in his pocket and pulled out the little black bag Argus had given him. He heard the footsteps of the Angelo-demon thudding after him. He stopped. He emptied the bag into his hand. And then he tossed the c
ontents towards the oncoming beast.
The eyes rattled like marbles on the hard floor. They began to roll just as one of Angelo’s feet came down on them. The foot slid sharply forward and the demon became horizontal in the air. All ten circles of Hell shook when he hit the ground.
Zac and Haures exchanged a glance, then they both set off running. Zac reached the fallen Angelo first. He leaped up on to his bare chest and fired a spray of holy water towards Haures, forcing the duke to duck for cover.
“Get away from him! What are you doing?” Haures demanded, but Zac was no longer listening to him. He scrambled along Angelo’s chest until he could look him in the eye.
“Angelo, it’s me. It’s Zac,” he said. “I know you’re in there. I hope you can hear me.”
He paused to scoosh more holy water at Haures, keeping him at bay.
“This isn’t you, Angelo,” he said. “Not really. This is what they made you, up there and down here. This is what they turned you into.”
A low growl rumbled from Angelo’s throat, but he wasn’t yet moving to attack.
“Up there they tried to make you an angel, and down here all they want you to be is a demon, but the real you is somewhere in the middle.” He shot more holy water backwards over his shoulder. Haures gave a yelp of panic and leaped out of harm’s way.
“Don’t listen to him, boy! Listen to your Uncle Haures.”
“I thought we were nothing alike, but I was wrong, Angelo,” Zac said. “You’re exactly like me – not perfect, but you’re not a demon, either. You’re exactly like everyone.” He stared deep into the fireballs that were Angelo’s eyes. “The one good thing they did for you up there was give you those Hulk comics. Everyone thinks the Hulk’s a monster, but he isn’t. That’s what you said. All he wants is for people to stop trying to hurt him. All he wants is a friend. Right? Just like you, Angelo. Just like you. That’s why you love the Hulk, Angelo. You are the Hulk.”
The Book of Doom Page 20
