I reached for Belinda’s hand and squeezed it tight. There was a long silence. Lysette allowed every man, woman and Uber to feel the weight of her words. It was so quiet you could have heard a snake making its way through the rocks.
“Mobilize,” a commander shouted, and the call went up, repeated throughout the vast camp. In the first hour we checked our weapons, assessed our powers once more, formed into groups and heard the choppers arrive. In the second hour we started to march. Behind us, the lower plains bristled with hidden attack helicopters; so many I couldn’t count, and they made the tan landscape look black.
They would join us at the right moment. It had all been meticulously planned. Further away, I knew, under cover, dozens of fighter jets lay in wait. The initial attack on Las Vegas would be like nothing the world had ever seen.
I was close to the front. With me marched the Chosen, together at last, all prepped and ready for war. I hadn’t seen Ken or Cleaver, or Lilith for that matter, but assumed they were among the vast group behind us. You couldn’t keep track of everybody. I hadn’t heard anything from Jade or Amber or how their quest had fared. I had to assume it had failed, but I hoped the elven sisters were safe and coming back to join us.
I looked back and caught Lucy’s eye, her face almost hidden by a thick black cloak. She smiled, an act which lightened my load. Far to the right I saw the witch coven walking. Raychel was there uncloaked, as Cheyne had been, their leader now and responsible for some crafty plans when the battle was joined. With me were the stalwarts, Tanya Jordan, Belinda and Natalie. Soon, I guessed we would have to separate with the army, but for that first thirty minutes we walked together.
We would never walk that way again. Not all of us.
The end was here. The Chosen’s journey had reached its last march. I nodded at Leah. Kinkade had joined with her for this last battle, able to offer his additional Uber strength to her healing skills. It was a great and appreciated gesture from the oddest of Ubers. Lysette and Ceriden were with the commanders, strained and focused. Ceriden had looked like a different person ever since Taryn died. I’d never seen a vampire look so murderous.
I turned to stare at the ground ahead.
Finally, I knew where I would be at the end of everything.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
The Devil measured and inspected the new kingdom he’d built.
Here, in the large pool area that had once been called the Garden of the Gods, bordered by the high hotel towers of Caesar’s Palace, the pit of hell had been recreated. It had taken time, lives and diligence, but none of that mattered – it would be worth it. Black ichor had been poured into the pools and then thickened to form a new floor. It rose in sloping tiers up the inner surfaces of the high towers – a pathway for devils, demons and other malevolent denizens to descend from the hotel’s roof to the new abyss, the pit itself. The roof was the new entrance, where all manner of beings came to grovel and abase themselves before Lucifer’s guard and, if they were deemed worthy, they would make the trek to the new Hades.
The Devil was pleased with this, his vision. As a man, he’d visited Las Vegas many times, but with only a miniscule amount of power to hand he’d always been thwarted – both in the scope of his vision and at the roulette tables.
It turned out that the house didn’t always win.
Humans had been forcibly molded – still living – into the ichor-based walkways. They reached out, wailing in their agony, begging him to end their lives. But they hung and struggled now as they would for a thousand years. They had been nailed to various windows too and, their bodies inextricably entwined, formed a remarkable human tree to the right of his throne, a tree that lived, breathed and screamed.
His new throne was black obsidian, the twin to the one he used in the first hell. Humans and cowardly demons knelt at its base, twisted around its legs and even hanging from its arms, their dislocated limbs the only thing that kept them agonizingly attached. The Devil had only to shake his throne and the glorious sounds of a thousand human screams caressed his ears.
Humans had been planted up to their necks in the new ichor, a string of them stretching away from his throne. The ground was littered with living heads and broken bones, with those that wished they were dead and more that barely knew they still lived.
Among them, his special 200 slaves fetched and carried. Naked men and women harvested marrow, blood and flesh from dead bodies, preparing a feast to end all feasts, a victory banquet for his greatest generals. The Devil laughed as demons fell upon the slaves, defiling and maiming them, whipping them to within an inch of their lives and then making them rise once more to continue their gruesome task.
Now they knew hell. Now they knew how bad it could get.
Tomorrow, he would swop them for another 200.
Eternal damnation was here, and it tasted like nectar to the Devil. He had only one more issue to take care of. The last army of the humans was coming, and it wasn’t an insignificant one. He felt two things for them. Appreciation, that they’d been able to amass such a force to fight as one, and delight, that he’d be able to crush and break and dismember them all together.
He’d bury them to their necks, in rows like plants, and send scythes spinning across the land. He’d impale them alive, facing the ones they loved. He’d throw them all into a pit of hungry eels. But they wouldn’t die. They’d live forever and experience their deaths over and over again.
“They have started their march,” General Jinn, of the second hell, told him through a telepathic link. “We can meet them on the plains.”
Jinn was tasked with dealing with the army from the north. The Devil gave him the all clear. Another General, Rofocale of the fifth hell, controlled his forces watching the army from the south.
“This one too,” he said. “They coincide their attack.”
“Of course they do. They may be fodder but they are free-thinking. At least, for now. Deal with them, Rofocale, and I will bestow upon you bloodied glories for the next 500 years.”
“I will, my liege.”
The Devil dismissed his generals. He then released the winged demons who’d helped him build the new pit. A brutal day was coming, and it would benefit only the Lord of Hell.
A new voice entered his head. It was one of the guards stationed above, stating that Samael had arrived and was asking for an audience.
Samael?
It reminded him of Lilith. The demon king had been in charge of Lilith’s safety and welfare for the last seventeen years. He’d lost her four times and had been tracking her again when the Devil last checked.
“Send him down.”
Sometime later Samael knelt at the foot of his throne. “Tell me,” the Devil said. “What has become of my daughter since the hellgates were opened?”
Samael kicked out at one of the humans embedded in the ichor to his right the same way he’d swat an annoying fly from the air. “She found her mother. I tracked her. I found her once more and she came to me with a proposal.”
The Devil leaned forward, the movement casing agony to a thousand human limbs. “A proposal? That interests me.”
“She says that you let her live unscathed this last seventeen years, even after her twenty-first birthday. She wants the same for her mother and herself until the day they die. In return, she will give you the Lionheart blade and its wielder.”
The Devil sat back. “She’s twenty-one already?” It seemed he’d been so caught up in preparations he’d wasted a seventeen-year experiment. “Ah, that’s a shame.”
Samael waited. He was in true demonic form today, a sign of fealty to his leader, and he wore black robes crawling with rats the size of small dogs.
The Devil considered his response. Chiefly, there was the failure of his great experiment. Seventeen years was but a flicker of flame in the inferno of his vast existence, but he’d been looking forward to seeing how fast and hard she could be corrupted. But still, it seemed she wasn’t lost yet.
“The L
ionheart blade,” he mused. “So Ken Hamilton did bring it back from the pit? A strong specimen, that one, to have escaped the pit of hell.”
“He hasn’t been sighted, I believe,” Samael said. “I only just got here myself.”
“But Lilith has them both?”
“She proposed to lure them here. They believe they are coming to destroy you and will fall into a trap.” Samael leered. “Which is the best way, is it not?”
The Devil looked up as a figure swayed toward Samael. He recognized the unclothed form of Emily Crowe, his greatest human subject and architect of Satan’s return to earth. She was covered in blood from head to toe, both human and demon. She wore a necklace of female finger bones around her neck and a headdress of rotting skin. The Devil had seen her murder over 200 of her kin so far and he knew that he hadn’t seen half the death she’d wrought. He entered her mind and saw only nightmarish visions of blood-letting, debauchery and murder. He nodded with satisfaction.
“We have guests coming,” he told her. “Ken Hamilton and Lilith.”
“I remember the blond man.” Crowe slurred her words. “Is he mine?”
“Maybe,” the Devil said and then turned back to Samael. “When my daughter arrives, fetch her to me. I will be most interested to hear what she has to say.”
Samael inclined his head. “It will be done, my Lord Lucifer.”
The Devil sat back and stretched luxuriously, surrounded by yet more screaming, and thought about the day to come. His victory was almost complete.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Maybe it was the largest army ever assembled, I don’t know, but I walked in its vanguard, coming down from the mountain and crossing an undulating plain that led to the outskirts of Las Vegas. Before we’d covered half of it the legions of hell gathered before us, marching out from between buildings and around warehouses and through parking lots, filling the desert and blocking our way forward. We approached until about 300 yards separated us, then we spread out along the plain.
I waited. My blood was up, my adrenaline on fire. Wayclearer demons formed their front ranks. Behind that I could see other monsters that I recognized and many more. Above them the winged ones circled, screeching and tumbling though the clouds. And then I saw a hierarchy demon, which Lysette whispered was Astaroth, stalking through their mass toward the front.
The commanders called the choppers to readiness. They called the jets. Military vehicles already moved among us and now revved their engines. Most were outfitted as the Dino Hunters vehicle had been, retro-fitted with steel lances and sharp outcroppings, reinforced with iron bars.
Before us, the legions of hell screeched and jeered; they raised sword, lance and shield; their armor sparkled under the bright midday sun. Their ranks stretched backward until they merged with buildings, with roads and fields. Beyond them, the luxurious towers of the Strip reared over all like opulent, ominous sentinels.
Belinda cracked her knuckles. Even she carried sharpened silver today, stating it couldn’t hurt to have weapons that slayed quicker. She wore a black leather jacket over a flack-vest and a T-shirt that read: I’m With Stupid. A finger pointed in my direction. It was typical Belinda, an attempt to defuse the tension.
I felt then observed the army start to advance. Vehicles pulled ahead. I saw a brave Lysette and a furious Ceriden standing in the bed of the lead truck alongside a soldier manning a large-caliber machine gun. The dusty plain between us and our enemies diminished fast. Winged demons filled the skies. The noise was tremendous, filling my senses. I had to concentrate hard to draw forth my power as the overall spectacle threatened to take my attention.
Our armored trucks smashed through the demons’ lines first, swerving to follow a snaking line left and right, not penetrating the enemy ranks too deeply because they knew they would become swamped. We hit their lines minutes later, thousands of men and women on foot.
The sound of our meeting was thunderous. A resounding clash of metal and flesh rang out, earth’s mighty defiance, and I hope they felt it all the way down to the bowels of hell.
I sent a bolt of power forward, mowing down eight demons. Soldiers filled the breach, firing into the throng with their automatic weapons. Our charge cut through theirs and we were borne into their ranks through sheer momentum, carving them apart like a knife through butter. I unleashed white lightning again and again, never depleting myself but always having backup power in the background, bubbling up. Belinda swung her knives to my left. Tanya used her wicked, curved scimitars to my right. Natalie was close behind, clad in body armor and amplifying my skills.
Lysette and Ceriden rode their truck, smashing through demons as if they weren’t there. Machine gun fire rang out from aboard a dozen similar trucks. I defended an attack to my left, taking it on my reinforced shoulder plate. Belinda finished the demon before it could strike again. I felled three to her front, my power taking them off their feet and pushing them hard into those that came behind.
I noticed Ceriden’s truck bending its trajectory to the right, where I knew a large force of Ubers waited behind rolling sand dunes, unseen for now. He was fast approaching the far flank of the demon horde.
My attention snatched back to the battle around me. Demons were so close I could hear them snuffling, wheezing and snapping. A group of soldiers went down ahead, overwhelmed by three antelope-looking things with racks of teeth, talons and horns. I sent a knife-like blast, shearing them apart. I protected left and right as demons came at me, raising small, shielding pulses of power that absorbed a demon’s strike, but then exploded making them flinch away. It was an impromptu defense, one attempted right then on the battlefield, but it worked superbly. I could defend attacks now and strike back hard.
Three trucks cut across in front of us, moving demons down. The trucks were beset, demons hanging off their every protuberance and crawling all over their structures. Soldiers lined the beds, emptying entire mags into scowling, sneering faces, but it was the driver and the passenger that couldn’t hold out. Demons threw themselves at the windshield, at the side windows. Broken glass and dripping blood hampered their vision. Demon claws gripped inside the windshield, holding on, and then they started attacking the driver. I saw it all. I flung out strike after strike, protecting the vehicles as much as I could, but I soon had to attend to my own extremities.
Tanya went down, smashed by a demon. I heard her cry. I looked over and saw enemy bodies all around her; dozens were dead, but one had managed to reach out and slash her hamstring. Tanya was crawling, rolling onto her back as three demons tried to gut her with sword-like claws. She fought them lying down, but twelve more were coming.
I darted in her direction, Natalie with me. A knot of men and demons passed before us, separating us from Tanya for ten seconds before I could push past. By then, one demon sat on her arm, another laid across her lower half. Two more held her hands apart and a fifth was dipping its fangs toward her throat.
I unleashed white heat at them, burning and scattering them across the ground. They tumbled away like rag dolls, taking out more of their brethren and smashing into an oncoming T-Rex creature, making it stumble and fall headlong with a mighty shake of the ground.
I threw myself to the ground beside Tanya. “Are you okay?”
The calm Hawaiian warrior gave me a nod. “Yeah, but I can’t walk for shit. Legs aren’t working.”
I looked up, kept two demons at bay with a weak strike. When I looked around Natalie was shouting for someone.
Leah Aldridge!
She dropped down next to us, laid a hand on Tanya’s legs, and bent her head. I saw the glow in her eyes, the aura around her hands, I saw it seep into Tanya’s body.
Five seconds later our perfect warrior was extending her leg and nodding. “I’m good. Thanks for the heal.”
We rose. We started to make headway again. Leah moved back into a protective cordon. We’d learned from losing Devon at Miami Beach. I checked on Belinda, saw her spinning with two knives in hand, ta
king off one demon’s head and another’s hand, still spinning, turning into another group, thrusting and stabbing until they lay dying on the floor. She was in her element, and so were we.
Soldiers, police and civilians drove forward, using guns and knives and makeshift weapons. They were the real heroes for me, the everyday men and women fighting for their family, their home and their country. I assisted with power strikes but was soon forced to protect myself.
Bigger demons were already closing in. I saw a T-Rex kick a Hummer so hard it slid ten feet sideways and ended up on its side. The bellowing of monsters was horrendous, the stuff of nightmares. I saw velociraptor-type things leaping through knots of men, rending with their claws and snapping with their teeth, killing so many I couldn’t count. I hit them in the air with my lightning, smashing their bones and their teeth. I saw winged beasts landing claws out and scooping up soldiers. Others just smashed down, crushing men and women beneath their feet or spearing them with long, pointed beaks. Something twice the size of a T-Rex shambled into view. There were snakes slithering past our feet, tentacles the size of small cars waving in the air. I didn’t know if they belonged to one creature or many. They tipped vehicles and swiped at platoons or grabbed people with the spiked tips of their arms. I shredded them whenever I saw them.
We were tiring, but we were winning. We pushed hard for Vegas, splitting the demonic army. I looked around and saw our epic army, spread for miles, countless ranks thick, staying together and fighting together.
I felt a burn deep inside. I was tired and needed a break. But there was no let up. Soldiers came past me and Natalie by the dozen. I tried to protect them and Belinda and Tanya. I felled charging beasts when I could. It didn’t occur to me that I hadn’t seen Ken or Cleaver or Felicia until I saw the lone wolf battling to my left, alongside Belinda.
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