Heroes

by David Leadbeater

  “I will sssslayyy youuuu,” she hissed with that hateful voice. “Assss I sssslayed your pathetic friend.”

  Milo made no move except to stand straighter, taller, harder. Ken felt the first inkling of positivity. Maybe . . .

  Without warning, Dementia flew at Milo. Her hands outstretched, her teeth gnashing, her face as misshapen as if it had been twisted by someone’s bare hands.

  Milo didn’t move. Dementia struck him with immense force . . . and then bounced off, landing on her back in the sand, snarling but with a comic expression of surprise on her face.

  “Oh, yes,” Ken spat, rising to his knees and slamming the ground with excitement. “Yes!”

  Dementia scrambled up, shook her mangy head, and attacked again, this time with more care. Milo raised two trunk-like arms to defend himself but remained rooted to the spot. Dementia stepped to the side. Milo glared at her from the corner of his right eye.

  “You killed Eliza. She was the best of us.”

  “She wassssn’t ssssooo tough.”

  “I mean in heart and mind, body and soul. Not with fists and fangs. You took the one true light from all of us.”

  Ken turned to Felicia. “I sure hope that’s not true.”

  She shook her head, not even close to forgiving him for letting her live, for wasting his soul for her.

  Dementia snarled and struck. Her nails tore chunks from Milo’s left arm. There was no blood, but tatters of flesh curled away. When Milo didn’t react, she hit him again, widening the wound. Then she stepped back, seemingly confused.

  She’d never fought an opponent that refused to fight back.

  She titled her head at the Devil.

  “Kill him,” the impossibly deep voice grated.

  But as she nodded, as her attention was diverted, Milo struck at her with all his might. This was not the time for principles and Dementia certainly didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t far away but Milo put all his bulk into the attack.

  Dementia was lifted off her feet, flying through the air, screaming. She came down hard on her spine and Milo was on top of her in an instant, letting his body crush her into the dirt. Ken heard the air whistling out of her lungs. He saw her legs kicking. He smiled. Milo was almost there.

  In the same way that Eliza had been.

  Ken rose to his feet in his enthusiasm. The guards didn’t notice, so rapt was their attention on the combat. Milo wouldn’t be moved easily. He slammed both elbows down on Dementia’s skull and face. She ripped at his sides, his back, shredding his clothes and then his skin, but Milo never flinched. Blood streamed from her face, but Milo kept his head turned away. He concentrated on her arms for a while and then grabbed tight hold of her neck.

  Screaming Eliza’s name, he choked her with every ounce of his strength.

  Ken watched. He saw Dementia’s eyes bulge, her black tongue squeeze from between her thin lips. He saw her heels drumming the ground. He felt nothing except a feeling of righteousness. This was good and just and evened the scales a little bit.

  Dementia launched her last-gasp attack. She was almost gone. Her head came up hard, smashing into Milo’s face. The big vampire lurched, slipped and fell forward, stunned. Somehow, he caught himself. Dementia writhed underneath him, a deadly thrashing snake. Her movements, the dirt, and her toxic blood started to have an effect, causing Milo to lose his deadly grip. He rolled away, leaving her gasping and clutching her throat.

  He didn’t give her a second to recover.

  He jumped at her again, but this time her knees were in place, striking at his face. She managed to roll away and then struck at his ear, finally leaping atop his body as he landed face-first on the ground.

  Now, she straddled his back.

  Her hands circled the back of his neck, claws digging into flesh. Ken walked three involuntary steps forward but one of the guards jabbed a spear at him, forcing him back.

  Milo bellowed, bucked and heaved. Dementia drove a small knife into his back, then withdrew it and aimed at his neck.

  “I will hack your head offff for pleassssure.”

  The knife went in. Milo bellowed. Ken cried out with sympathetic pain. But at that moment the Devil shot to his feet and stared at the skies as if seeing a message up there. Ken looked too but saw nothing. He listened. Dementia had seen the Devil’s movement and stopped her grisly but apparently pleasurable task.

  “Emily Crowe,” the Devil said.

  All movement in the arena stopped.

  Ken waited with them, staring blankly at Felicia who stared impassively back. He recalled that Emily Crowe was the leader of Black Chapter – the coven that had summoned the hierarchy of demons. She was probably the Devil’s chief human contact on earth.

  At last, the Devil turned back to the arena and raised his hands. “Emily Crowe is ready,” he said with exultance.

  The crowd cheered louder than ever. They seemed eager, fervent and impatient.

  “She is ready and now needs the two artefacts that are in hell to open our hellgate.” His gaze switched to Dementia. “Where are they?”

  “He buried one.” Dementia crawled off Milo and pointed at Ken. “And the other . . .”

  The Devil narrowed his eyes at her. “Yes?”

  “He gave to Lilith, your daughter, and told her to carry it to Miami, to Aegis and to the Chosen.”

  Ken felt a mix of relief, pride, nausea and anxiety. It fired his muscles, his power and it churned in his stomach like sour milk.

  The Devil turned that terrifying mien to him; the horns, the fang-filled mouth and those horrible, blazing eyes.

  “Tell me where the hidden artefact is.”

  “Not a chance,” Ken grumbled, looking away. “I don’t make bargains with the—” He stopped abruptly, feeling a great wrench in his heart.

  You did make a bargain though.

  Felicia was glaring at him with big, sad eyes. It was that, as much as anything, that made him honor the bargain.

  “It’s buried near the house on the hill,” he said and told them the location. There was still hope in his heart that Lilith had escaped hell.

  “Go now,” the Devil told Dementia. “Go quickly.”

  The demon-bitch rose and ran off, a grisly whirlwind gone in three seconds.

  “Lock them back in their cages.” The Devil looked down at Ken, Felicia and Milo. “We will see if we can use them later.”

  Ken didn’t struggle as the guards herded them out of the arena. All in all, it hadn’t been a bad day. They’d started and ended it three strong. Felicia wasn’t hurt. Milo didn’t look too bad. He felt good. They had new information, that Emily Crowe was close to securing all seven artefacts which would enable her to open all the hellgates and summon the Devil to earth.

  But still, she didn’t have Lilith’s artefact.

  Hopefully, he thought. But he had faith. There was still much to fight for. Still everything to fight for. All they had to do was stay alive a bit longer.

  And then just a little bit more.

  It sounded like an old song sung by a hot chick, but he couldn’t recall right now. His head was mashed, his personality changed. He was a new Ken.

  Because now, he felt responsible for both Felicia and Milo.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I was in hell.

  First, I’d gotten word that Lucy’s plane was under attack, a plane that also carried many friends – Lysette, Cleaver, Jade, even Ceriden and more. Then we heard that F16s were dogfighting with demons in the skies and then came news of the final crash – the moment the plane came down.

  We all turned and stared at each other.

  I felt useless, desperate. My heart pounded and my body shivered. My throat was as dry as old parchment. We all had tears in our eyes: Belinda, our wild card and my potential girlfriend; Cheyne, the witch queen with the remarkable nose; Giles, the leader of Aegis; Tanya Jordan, our world-class warrior from Hawaii. And Natalie, wife to the deceased Johnny Trevochet, who seemed to have inherited some of his powers �
� an event we were all still trying to understand.

  Lysette eventually explained that everyone had survived. They’d lost the artefact but still lived thanks to the heroic fighter pilots and their incredible skills. As I started to ask about Lucy, Lysette interrupted me.

  “You have to come here,” she said.

  I knew the mind-reader was struggling, trying to rein in a plethora of emotions. I knew something wasn’t right.

  “Everyone survived though?”

  “Yes,” Lysette said hesitantly. “We’re all still here.”

  I frowned, trying to force some unnameable fear away, something that twisted deep in my stomach for no apparent reason.

  Giles put a hand on my shoulder. “We should go,” he said. “It feels right that the whole team should be back together.”

  I didn’t mention that Ken and the others weren’t here but headed immediately for the nearest vehicle and then the airport. Soon, we were airborne, being driven implacably toward a new and terrible future I wasn’t sure I wanted to face. The world was tilting on its axis in more ways than one. The hierarchy demons now had all the artefacts except those that went down to hell, and we had no idea of their current status. Did Emily Crowe and her demonic army already have the means to summon Lucifer to earth? The ceremony might have begun.

  As the plane cut through the clouds, I remembered that there was one last artefact – the seventh. One that Crowe and nobody else had yet tried to find. We figured this was because it was either the hardest or the easiest. We just didn’t know which one. Frustration was my most prevalent bedfellow these days, even more so than Belinda.

  Thoughts of the fiery, blue-eyed blonde dynamo temporarily lifted my heart. We had become a couple during both our and the world’s worst moments in history. Through the initial mysterious and unidentified catastrophic events that heralded the coming of Gorgoth. The revelation that Ubers existed. The attack at Miami Beach and now the scouring of the world by bloodthirsty demonic creatures. I dreaded to think what the genuine, normal human being was going through right now. The only saving grace was that the news networks were still up and running and trying their best to broadcast candid information.

  Belinda was at my side, her head resting on my shoulder. We barely spoke through the entire flight, our thoughts chased through with a nameless, creeping dread. The hours passed slowly but sometime in the late afternoon we descended into Orlando.

  My first thought was that it was a scene from hell – a scene devised and drawn by one of the old visionaries. There were a hundred separate fires around the airport. There were blackened and blasted carcasses. There was wreckage and flashing lights and smears of dark blood the length of some runways. There were pools of gore on fire, severed heads that looked like they had once belonged to dragons. Teams of men surrounded several winged beasts that still struggled, emptying their machine guns into their brains. As our plane touched down, I saw men and women on their knees, crying, shuddering, attempting to come to terms with this abysmal new world.

  Once the plane stopped taxiing, we disembarked, not even considering the customs which probably wasn’t working anyway. We knew where the others were because Lysette had phoned me when we were on the plane. Together, we ran to an abandoned airplane hangar on the eastern side of the enormous site.

  When I saw Lucy, my legs folded. I hit the ground, tearing my jeans, but managed to stop myself from face-planting the floor. All the hurt and loss of the last few years came surging back. How Lucy reacted when Raychel walked out of our lives with no explanation, never to return. How my young daughter blamed herself, wishing she’d been more thoughtful, more cheerful and less argumentative with her mother. And then when she’d started cutting herself and ended up in hospital.

  That’s where all this shit started, I thought.

  Could it all be a bad dream? I recalled the ending of Lost. But that had been the worst ending of all time. I didn’t think even my dreams could hit that low.

  I realized my thoughts were following a rather hysterical path. With an effort I concentrated all my focus on Lucy.

  I didn’t want to. I couldn’t take it in. Something was terribly, irrevocably wrong. She wore all black. Her hair was hanging in clumps, stuck together with dried blood. Her face was as white as pure porcelain, her eyes big and round and black, staring out at the world in terror. Bloody streaks coated her cheeks and neck and all I could see was a vulnerable, broken child that used to love me.

  Ceriden and Ethan sat beside her, holding her up, talking to her. I approached and she saw me. Her mouth cracked open.

  “Dad?”

  I fell to my knees. The tears came. I reached out and held her, trying not to hug her too hard. I didn’t know where her major wounds were. I didn’t know if she had any. After a long moment, I pulled away.

  Whatever else was happening in that warehouse, all the other reunions and news-breaking, I missed it all. It was just me and my daughter.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She stared at me, her mouth open, her expression at a total loss. She didn’t have the words. She couldn’t explain it. I saw Ceriden shift at her side, perhaps trying to gain my attention. I saw Ethan move away.

  “I’m here,” I said. “I’m right here.”

  “Perhaps I could help . . .” Ceriden murmured.

  I ignored him. For the first time I studied the blood clinging to my daughter. There was entirely too much blood for her to be sitting here rather than in a hospital bed. It struck me then that Lucy always ended up surrounded or covered in blood, from the first time she cut herself to this very moment.

  “This isn’t all yours,” I said. “Did somebody die?”

  Lucy’s eyes grew big as if they’d filled with tears, but there was no water. Her lips trembled. A female hand fell on my right shoulder. I glanced up at Lysette.

  I trusted our mind-reader. I looked from her to Lucy. “What happened?”

  “I’ve been rehearsing this ever since it happened,” Lysette said. “Logan, I’m sorry, but Lucy died in the plane crash. This . . . this . . .”

  I felt so much pain it made my heart miss a beat. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. The pain in my chest was so intense I thought I was having a stroke.

  “But . . .”

  “Ethan saved her before she died. There was only one way, Logan.”

  Still, I couldn’t comprehend it. But I turned to my daughter and really looked at her. I looked at the blood, the whiteness of her face, the terrible uncertainty and, now, the two ragged holes in her neck.

  My world exploded. I knew what had happened. Before I knew what I was doing I launched myself at Ceriden, gripping his neck with both hands. My weight bore him backward, off his seat and to the ground. More importantly, I felt my inner power gathering, the power of the Chosen.

  I would wipe this boil off the face of the earth.

  People struck at me. I don’t know who. I threw them away with blips of power. It was only when a female voice penetrated my thoughts that I listened.

  “He didn’t do it. He didn’t mean it. There was no other way. If not for this she would be dead. Gone.”

  “She is dead!” I shouted without thinking. “She is gone!”

  “She has the same thoughts. The same worries. She’s the same girl, Logan. I mean, look at her now.”

  Shrugging Lysette’s words away, I whirled. Lucy was on her feet, swaying and struggling to stand, and she was screaming at me.

  “Leave him alone! It wasn’t his fault! You left me again and you’ll never have to worry about leaving me now. I . . . I’m free.”

  I collapsed as all the strength rushed out of me. I’d worried about my daughter being romanced by vampires, about her childish wish to become a Shade. But it was worse than that now. Far worse.

  Lucy had become a vampire. Ceriden and his bastard brethren had claimed my daughter for their own. I struck the floor. I destroyed one side of the hangar with power strikes. I railed and I cried but nothing chang
ed.

  I was alone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Emily Crowe was finalizing preparations for the summoning of hell to Earth.

  She stood atop a hundred-foot rise. The salt flats of Badwater Basin spread out before her. Death Valley was the perfect place to gather the fiends of hell that had already arrived on earth through Miami’s hellgate. It was the perfect place to summon the Devil and thus, open another hellgate. It was vast and high and surrounded by mountains. It was the hottest place on earth. It shimmered with a powerful beauty and, it was said, when a human walked on the salt flats the intense temperature conditions they were subjected to meant they were actually dying.

  Still, hundreds of visitors came here every day.

  Crowe studied the extensive salt plain below her. She saw the creatures of hell, sitting or walking, cavorting, coupling and fighting. There were devils and demons, thousands of the wayclearer beasts. There were things that slithered and burrowed. Beings seventy-feet high. Many she hadn’t even imagined existed. Monsters reminiscent of dinosaurs, from the iconic T-Rex to pterodactyls and velociraptors. She knew worse things were in the oceans – alligators the size of houses, sharks a hundred feet in length. The hellgate at Miami Beach let beasts into the seas too.

  They stalked, slithered and wormed their way across the valley, end to end, side to side. They waited impatiently, held in check by the hierarchy demons now present. Crowe saw Baal and Belial. Others were arriving soon. The whole contingent of hell on earth was coming to this scorching place.

  This perfect inferno.

  Crowe turned her mind to more mundane but just as imperative thoughts. Black Chapter, the coven that had summoned the hierarchy demons in the first place, were also starting to gather here. It was they who would open the hellgate and summon Lucifer forth. She’d known all of them for a long time, way before she became the lead singer in an all-girl rock band called Supernatural. The success of that band had been directly due to their deal with the Devil.