Heroes

by David Leadbeater

  He scooped it up and aimed, but Samael was ready. He clawed at Cleaver, raking his wrist and making him drop the weapon again. It fell to the ground but suddenly Cleaver wasn’t there anymore.

  He reappeared behind Samael, driving a wicked eight-inch blade into the center of his neck. Ken thrust the Lionheart blade through the demon’s chest and Lilith watched him die.

  “The bane of my life,” she said, breathing raggedly. “Gone at last.”

  “It just took some combat art,” Ken said with a grin. “We can do this.”

  They sidestepped the dead body and rechained themselves. Lilith worried that her father would read their minds the second they came close enough, but hoped speed and the fact that both Ken and Cleaver had enhanced power of their own would give them a few seconds to strike.

  Lilith led the two men across another bridge separating the Bellagio from Caesar’s and then past a restaurant called Hell’s Kitchen. She didn’t have to turn around to know both men had raised eyebrows at each other in bemusement.

  “Almost there,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “Just get me inside,” Ken said. “I’ll do the rest.”

  “I’m ready to end all this,” Cleaver said.

  Lilith heard the fury in their voices, the outrage. She couldn’t blame them. She made her way past two sets of guards and followed a new ichor-based road to the very top of a hotel tower. Now, they were faced by eight guards and an arched gate made of living, intertwined humans. She dragged her captives forward three steps.

  “My father awaits,” she said.

  “You are Lilith,” one of them said unnecessarily. “I will check with the Lord.”

  “He will want to see me. Tell him I have the Lionheart blade and its wielder.”

  She saw the demons stiffen, their eyes growing wide. She saw them stand more readily as if preparing to attack. Lilith gave the chains a yank so that both Ken and Cleaver fell to their knees before her.

  “I captured them with Samael’s help in the desert,” she said. “Alas, he died of terrible wounds after the battle, but he did capture these two.”

  It was perfectly plausible. The demon passed under the human arch and proceeded down an ichor walkway. Lilith was left on top of the tower, looking into the brightness of the day and watching demons gamboling about the surrounding buildings and the roads below. As she watched, an army of black-skinned devils gathered below, their ranks moving forward, boots slamming the concrete road. She guessed they were reinforcements heading for the northern battle.

  “How long will he be?” she asked, conscious that wasted time meant wasted lives.

  “The moment your father has time for you, he will return.”

  It didn’t help, but Lilith held tight to the chains, willing that time to come fast.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  At the battle to end all battles, I was in the vanguard.

  Around me and behind me were hundreds of thousands of men, vehicles, vampires and other Ubers. We fought demon hordes carrying lance, sword and shield, that used their own bodies, that tried to eat us, and that dive-bombed us from the sky. As we neared Vegas, the crush tightened. Larger demons blocked the way and took longer to fell. Rocket-propelled grenades bounced off their hides, but then soldiers took to firing into their mouths or taking their legs.

  When they fell, they took out two dozen ground-demons.

  I concentrated my power blasts on the big ones and the winged ones that darted through the skies like missiles; ducking, weaving and sweeping down. Lucy threw tornados at them, sending them spinning out of control. And when one collided with the next they always took three or four more crashing to the ground. Once there they screeched and crawled and snapped their beaks until men and women finished them off.

  The vampire host came in from my right, almost meeting us at one point but then driven back. Lucy was close to their front, and I saw Lysette and Milo too. It was only when the demon generals sent most of the velociraptor-type demons at them that they lost ground.

  I saw the witch coven winning the skies for us. I saw them battling huge monsters, but then my attention was fully engaged. A multitude of sword-carriers came at me, snuffling through face-visors. They all wore heavy armor, like a knight’s, and carried shields that bore the same crest, a sweeping blood-red claw. I raised my handgun in surprise, shocked to be targeted at first but then realizing how stupidly naive that was.

  I fired. The bullets sliced through the armor, taking the first two down, but eight more followed. They thrust with swords. I gathered my power. A soldier to my right twisted and let loose a burst of machinegun fire, but he couldn’t bring the weapon properly to bear for fear of hitting our own men. Two more went down. I rolled, dodging the sweep of a sword. I came up, right into a heavy boot that connected solidly with the bridge of my nose and made me see stars.

  I fell on my back, pained and winded.

  One of the demons raised a sword above my heart and prepared to plunge. I threw my power at him before realizing it had all been expunged when I took the hit to the nose. He plunged the sword down but then, Natalie, always at my side, launched her body at him, hitting his sword arm and diverting his attack.

  They hit the ground at my side.

  I breathed deeply. I shook off the pain and the shock. I was no soldier, no seasoned combatant, and this close-up conflict was impossible. Down here, I saw boots, shoes and trainers; I saw blood soaking into the dust, churned up mud, and body parts. I saw those that were dying, left behind, and those that were wounded, screaming.

  I rose, but another sword was already plunging toward my skull, aiming to cleave it in two. I raised a power blast as a shield, but Tanya Jordan was already there, already my shield. She took the blow on one of her short swords, deflected it, but then saw her sword flicker away. Nevertheless, she thrust her other sword into the demon’s neck, wrenched it back out and then stabbed the next, and the next. I pushed up, crying out with rage, and unleashed a strong bolt of power. The bolt exploded and sent them flying left and right and into the air. Tanya clapped me on the shoulder.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I panted. “Thanks for the assist.”

  “No worries.” She slipped away, a deadly artist, a lethal ballerina that drew blood with every shift of her body.

  I grabbed Natalie, checked she was okay and then we were up. I quickly explained to her a way to retain a small store of energy, something that was always available, an emergency ration if you will. She grasped the idea immediately.

  We were approaching Vegas, a part of the city where warehouses, office blocks and other buildings marked out territory, dissected by wide roads. Still, we were stalled and, as the battle raged, I saw we were losing many men in the melee. The demons appeared to have incalculable forces. We did not.

  I prayed to all the gods that our commanders would see, and tried to stem the losses with a stunning assault. I concentrated on saving our fighters being beset by knots of demons, and tried to clear some of the path ahead. Winged beasts found it easier to pick us off in our vast but ever tightening knot.

  And then the moment I’d been waiting for happened. I heard the cry go up; the cry of exaltation, and everything good and true inside me rejoiced. My hair literally stood on end.

  They came in ranks, in rows. First were the jet fighters, F16s and F22s, screaming overhead and launching their payloads into the demonic horde; the second rank was made up of attack helicopters, Apaches and Sikorskys, thundering overhead with their guns blazing, making a furrowed field of our enemy. The third rank was of armored cars that raced between us, smashing headlong into evil, twisted bodies. The fourth rank was our soldiers, standing and firing at a prearranged signal, emptying mag after mag and millions of bullets into those that sought to annihilate us. Never, in the history of the world, had so much firepower been unleashed at one army, at one time, and the shuddering, thundering barrage of its impact was the greatest sight I had ever seen.

/>   The entire desert before us exploded. There was fire from rockets, from grenades, bullet streams so thick they obscured our vision, flaming clouds from missiles. A vast, wide, firestorm erupted where we struck and the demons screamed their agony.

  When the incredible attack was done, I stood, along with hundreds of thousands of men and women, looking for the result of the ruin we wrought.

  The vast plain was strewn with demonic wreckage. They lay in their thousands, dead, dying and wounded. Fires burned among them. Our armored trucks mowed down the few that still stood.

  We had a chance now, an open area where we could enter the city. As one the cry went up, the commanders gave their orders through radios, and we charged. We charged for everything that the world meant to us.

  And yet, above, the battle raged on. I couldn’t believe the skill that I saw in the sky. F16s dived in and out of clouds, chasing groups of winged demons. F22s flew straight up at incredible speed, trying to shake off demons clinging to their wings and fuselages. I saw an incredible aerial feat where a pilot swung left and right as if he were negotiating a slalom course, right across the top of the sky, shredding countless demons until their bodies and their parts became an unbroken rain from the sky. How the pilots managed to miss each other and still destroy so many winged demons was magnificent.

  We were advancing properly for the first time. We were thousands strong, and we were converging on the Devil’s stronghold. The news from the other battle was also good. They hadn’t encountered as large a force and already had McCarran Airport in their sights.

  Ahead, the buildings where our enemy’s generals had been positioned smoked in piles of rubble. We could see clear streets ahead. I checked for my friends and saw Tanya running ahead. Lysette was with the vampires, riding a truck alongside Ceriden and Milo. Lucy strode in their vanguard, fully focused and picking off random demons that appeared. To my left, Leah Aldridge toiled non-stop, moving from one person to the next, healing our troops. Her hair was soaked with sweat, her face drawn, her hands plastered with coagulated blood, but she never missed a beat.

  I didn’t see the witches, not all of them. I saw only two, clad in their black cloaks, losing ground as soldiers sprinted past them. I thought maybe they’d lost each other in the chaos.

  Further to my left, way out in front of the pack, ran Felicia. My heart lifted to see the wolf. I remembered her so well from York, how she helped me with her wild, incorrigible spirit, how she loved freedom and those runs through the woods.

  Our vast, lethal machine advanced one step at a time. We could see the high-rise casinos ahead, some ablaze, others covered so thickly with demons their walls appeared to move. It was then, above the tall towers of the Stratosphere, the Encore and Caesar’s Palace, that we saw two gigantic shapes take to the air. They spewed fire and screamed so loudly the noise blasted our hearing. They beat their wings like thunder and started on a straight track toward us.

  Or rather, toward our jet fighters.

  I looked around at Natalie. “We have to get closer.”

  She nodded. “Do it.”

  I knew there were only two hierarchy demons remaining, so this had to be Beelzebub and Baal. Both were formidable, the right hands of the Devil himself. Even as I ran, my legs started to wobble.

  They came closer, their roaring filling the entire desert, two dragon-like titans working together. Our screaming jet fighters never hesitated; they just peeled away and met the dragons in the bright skies above Las Vegas Boulevard, twisting, turning and fighting above the world-famous hotels and casinos, filling the skies up there with fire and bullets, and explosion after explosion.

  Our world and our vision burned.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The skies were red. The ground was red. The Chosen were all around me. I’d found Belinda, surrounded by men.

  Bloody typical.

  The blonde was battered and bruised but still very much at the top of her game. Our army threaded between buildings. We’d stopped running, trying to conserve energy. We moved quickly, though, the vehicles ranging out in front. We came to another industrial area and threaded our way through it.

  I kept an eye to the skies. Our jet fighters flew rings around the two hierarchy demons up there, pounding them with lead and missiles. Beelzebub clawed two out of the sky. Both planes spiraled down into the Planet Hollywood hotel. I saw a fighter eject and Baal shoot up to grab him, but two F16s came in from the east and fired Mavericks into his scaly maw. The demon twisted away but spewed fire from its mouth, catching one of the planes and sending it burning into the fountains of Bellagio. I tried a lightning bolt but just couldn’t reach that far. My power dissipated too much to have any effect on the battle.

  We neared the Strip. The Stratosphere’s 1000-foot tower loomed over us. We were spread out, our army too large to follow the same road. Ahead, filling Las Vegas Boulevard, a darkness took shape.

  “Another army,” Natalie said. “The army that defends the Devil and his ultimate stronghold.”

  “Then it’s the final army,” I said. “And we’re right where we want to be.”

  Belinda was to my right. “We’re close,” she said. “We’ve lost no Chosen. We’re minutes away from his pit.”

  Tanya Jordan wiped her last remaining sword clean of her enemy’s blood. “It’ll be good to get home, after this. I miss the beach.”

  “I hear there’s a good one at Mandalay Bay,” Belinda said. “I’ll see you there.”

  “We all will,” I said. I wished I could have one last conversation with Lucy and Felicia, with Lysette and even Ceriden. But the vampires and our leader were a fair way to the right, following another road. I didn’t know where Felicia was. I wished I knew where Ken and Cleaver were too. I missed them.

  Soldiers crowded past us. Ahead, I saw Baal take a tumble, clattering down the outside of the Cosmopolitan, smashing windows as he fell. A cheer went up through the army. He wasn’t dead though; the F16s weren’t fast enough to drop down and end him. He rose again, bellowing.

  We sped up. The army in front of us didn’t look so dense, but I guessed it too was spread out. Before we’d gotten too far, they charged. I gathered every ounce of power and waited. The gap between the armies shrank and then they came together, resulting in one more intense, noisy clash of bodies and weapons. I unleashed a wave of power, flattening a swathe of them. Soldiers brought all their weapons to bear. I heard a roar to the right and left as our other armies were engaged.

  We stalled once more.

  To our right, the immense white tower of the Stratosphere rose into the sky, a marvelous sight, but it wasn’t that which caught my attention. Oddly at first, I saw the white being erased, but then I saw the walls creep. I watched terrible things crawl around the tower and down from its heights. They were slithering, sidling, edging creatures with squat bodies and six legs. They had mandibles and burning eyes. And they clung to the sides of the Stratosphere like ravenous spiders; a new and lethal army.

  And it was an army. The 1000-foot structure bristled with them. Soldiers stopped and fired up into their midst, and only then did I realize how dangerous and horrifying they were.

  They jumped off the walls, powering through their six legs to gain momentum, and landing in our midst. They slammed down on all six legs – pointed insectile limbs that dug into the asphalt – and snapped at us with extended, slavering mandibles.

  I reeled away, disgusted at first. Soldiers emptied their weapons into them, cracking their shells so that green blood flowed and spurted out. One collapsed in front of me, its foremost fangs hitting the asphalt less than an inch in front of my right foot. Our vehicles were almost useless here, becoming snarled in the crush of bodies. Helicopters roared overhead, still engaging what was left of the flying demons but now concentrating on the jumping six-legged beasts as well.

  I flung a power strike at the Stratosphere, clearing its lower flanks and then another into the snapping melee scuttling toward us. Spider-demons leapt onto th
e choppers too, some getting sliced by the rotor blades, others clinging to the skids or just bouncing off. Two choppers came down, plowing into a parking area to the right and then into the base of the Stratosphere.

  Belinda fought among the new demons, with more still advancing among us. I blasted a beast from her back and another that sneaked up on her blind side. I saw Tanya jump atop a wall, slashing down with her blade, severing mandible, claw and reaching tentacle. The very air shuddered above our heads as an F22 screamed over, then banked and flew at Beelzebub’s dragon form. The vampire army could be seen away to our right and I saw Lucy’s elemental power unleashed in the form of water and fire blasts, in the shimmering of air, and the upending of earth. The spider-demons were jumping in that direction too, from the other side of the Stratosphere, coming down on top of the vampires.

  There was a wide area of land ahead where they were building something new. The hoarding that secured the place had long since been torn down, and I saw a hidden horde of demons nestling there, lying in wait.

  There had to be 10,000 of them.

  I despaired. If they charged hard enough, they would slice right through us, all the way to the rear flanks. If we were broken apart, we would be taken apart. Three more jet fighters came down then, crashing onto the Strip and into Circus Circus. The explosions were enormous. Structures crumbled. I saw that the tide of battle was turning.

  We were going to lose.

  There were too many of them, too many claws, tusks, swords and spears. Our choppers unleashed a torrent of firepower at the crawling Stratosphere, pitting its façade until large chunks sheared off.

  Ahead, Belinda went down. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. She tripped over a scurrying rat-like demon and fell headlong into the mouth of a four-foot-tall spider. I cringed, I unleased a fury of power. The spider’s jaws came down on her shoulders and bit deep.