Deathbound
The Realm Protectors Series
Book Three
by
Spencer DeVeau
Copyright © 2016 by Spencer DeVeau
Cover design by Carmen Rodriguez
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Author’s Note:
For more books, updates, and complimentary review copies email me at [email protected]
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Deathbound
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
They say Hell is a place of pain and torture, a place where the bad go to die again and again for all of eternity, but Harold Storm quickly found out it wasn’t. As he looked down at the ruined buildings of something that once was — or might still be — a city, Harold Storm felt like he’d belonged here.
What should’ve been hot and fiery was actually cold and empty. A dreadful feeling of loneliness washed over the Realm’s newest Protector. What was worse than fire or having your soul ripped apart by Demons day in and day out?
The answer was simple. It was loneliness.
But Harold wasn’t alone.
A scrabble came from behind him and he clutched the intricate handle of the white sword tighter, ready to whirl around and behead any beast that dare oppose him.
Except it wasn’t a black demon with venom dripping from its fangs; it was Frank King, the monster hunter who’d hunted himself right into a trap. The old man struggled on his hands and knees, knocking gray dust free from the mountain the other side of the doorway had lead to.
“Here,” Harold said as he extended a hand down to Frank. But when Frank looked up, the notion of him being a senior citizen fled Harold’s mind. Those eyes were the eyes of a young man, not the eyes Harold remembered meeting in the Vampire King’s tree fortress. The eyes he’d met back then were tired, damaged, and losing their spark of life. Now, despite the way the hunter was doubled over and had taken to body-wracking fits of coughing, Frank King’s eyes looked twenty years younger and blazed with life.
“No. I don’t need your damned help,” Frank said.
Harold brushed the remark off and bent down to hook his arm under Frank’s, pulling him up.
“I said I didn’t need your help — ”
“In this place, we’re gonna need as much help as we can get,” Harold said.
Frank flexed his jaw, making the skin draped over the hard muscle dance and twitch. Then he bent down to pick up his crossbow which wasn’t ruined but looked to be in pretty bad shape. Their eyes met with a steely glare, hung there for a few moments, then Frank looked past Harold down to the ruined city below.
“What is this place?” Frank asked, walking forward with a slight limp. He draped the crossbow over his shoulder, then put a hand up to shield his eyes from light which didn’t exist.
“Hell,” Harold answered. “Bottom floor of all the Realms.”
“Where’s the fire? Where’s the monsters and ghouls and where’s the Devil? But most importantly, where’s that son of a bitch who killed my son?”
Harold noted the tattered remains of Frank’s clothing, the smell of sweat and the unmistakable stench of fear drifting off of him. He’d been through a lot; they both had been through a lot, but Frank’s damage went deeper than just his outward appearance. He shook any sense of feeling bad for him from his brain then said, “It’s a trap.”
“No shit, buddy,” Frank grumbled. “I ain’t that stupid to go running into a door leading to the unknown without a plan of my own.”
Harold smiled, the burnt flesh around his mouth, not used to the motion, crinkled like gift-wrapping paper. “Well, I guess I’m stupid.”
“No plan?”
Harold shrugged. “Plans aren’t always my strong suit. I mean, come on, do I really look like the kind of guy who plans stuff?”
“No,” Frank grumbled, “you look like the kind of guy who’s gonna help me find that jackass, murdering Demon and string him up by his guts.”
“I have bigger fish to fry,” Harold said.
“Like what, saving the human race? Saving the world?”
Harold didn’t answer, just looked at the man with narrowed eyes.
Then Frank smiled. “Oh, I know what it is. Sure, you might have to save the world — er, Realms, or whatever — but you’ll only do that if it means you’re back in the arms of that sweet, redhead piece of ass. What’s her name? Her and that old witch? Sasha was it?”
“Sahara,” Harold corrected and bared more teeth, pulling what was left of his lips up in a snarl.
“Yeah, that’s her name,” Frank said. He crossed his arms over one another and looked back to the ruined city below. “Amazing, the things we’ll do for a piece of pussy.”
“It’s not like that,” Harold said.
“Oh, my friend, it’s like that. It’s always like that. Whatever, to each his own. If you need that kind of motivation to save your own ass then so be it.”
Frank smirked and the way he did it brought up fire in Harold’s chest. The fire that led to the howling, that led to the —
“Listen, Storm, I never got a chance to say it, but I wanted to apologize for almost putting an arrow through your eye.”
Harold waved a hand, turned and started walking toward a slant that hopefully lead off of the rocks they had wound up on and into the city where he could do some investigating.
“Really, I mean it, Storm. I was not in my right mind — Hell, I never am.”
Harold stopped, and looked back at the old man with blazing eyes.
“My son’s been dead for a year and they say time heals all wounds, but I call bullshit on that old adage. Only thing that can heal this wound, or at least scab it over, is a little something I specialize in. Revenge is sweet, true, but I would’ve gone and shot at the first bastard I saw with those black eyes just to get it. Really, nothing personal. Glad I missed you though.”
“It’s okay,” Harold said. “Forgive and forget, right?”
Frank nodded, and flashed an ancient smile full of tobacco-yellowed teeth. But the smile didn’t linger long. He shivered, rubbing his hands against his forearms. “I’d hate to be in this place alone.”
“So far it seems like it’s just us,” Harold said.
No Wolves. No Demons. Just his dark thoughts and the weight of the Realms weighing on his mind.
“I don’t like it. It’s eerie.”
As they descended the small mountain, the temperature grew colder. Soon with each exhale of breath Harold saw a white cloud escape his mouth.
They walked in silence for what seemed like hours. Down there, it seemed, time moved a bit differently.
Harold’s phantom eyelids grew heavy. How long had it been since the poor man had actually slept on his own accord? He would drift off into sleep without knowing it. Pictures of Sahara’s copper-colored hair would float in front of him, her smooth skin, those deep, beautiful eyes. Then he’d step on an uneven piece of ground and be jolted back into the present, Frank walking silently behind him.
“We should stop up ahead,” Harold said when he no longer could take it. Each step was agonizing. He felt as if he were drowning in quicksand and every little movement just pulled him farther under. “I’m tired, and there’s no one around. We can sit for an hour or two then head into that city when we’re better.”
Frank opened his mouth in a natural reflex of protesting but decided not to. They settled at an outcropping of rocks where beyond that stood a cave. Harold went in first. Warmth radiated from the enclosed space. The darkness seemed almost endless but he reckoned it didn’t go on farther than a hundred feet or so. Still, he clutched the sword of Orkane tight. Behind him, Frank aimed down the sights of the crossbow.
“Ain’t bad,” Frank said. “Just for a couple of hours. Longer we wait, the more time that son of a bitch has to gather an army.”
Harold looked around, fighting to keep his eyelids raised. Directly in front of the cave was a field of dead grass and petrified bushes, beyond that was an empty road which led into the city.
“Don’t think he’ll be able to gather up much of an army down here,” Harold said. “Besides, he probably already has one.”
“Never underestimate evil, boy. Surely you know that being a Realm Protector and all.”
The way Frank said ‘Realm Protector’ irked Harold. He might’ve made a move to punch the man in the face had he not been so tired. A Realm Protector, as new as it was to Harold Storm, wasn’t a title one could throw around lightly. It meant everything in this universe. Screw the President. Screw the ruler of the Galaxy. Screw the Grandwitch. Realm Protector trumped all.
The thought lingered in Harold’s mind as he drifted away to sleep.
CHAPTER 2
Poor kid, Frank thought. He wasn’t much older than his son would’ve been, and now he had the weight of the world on his back. Frankly, Frank King didn’t think the boy named Harold Storm could take that much responsibility.
Hell, Frank couldn’t. He’d been a father and he couldn’t even handle that. Just up and let his own flesh and blood be murdered by a dark-eyed Demon.
Frank exhaled a cloud of white breath, leaned his head up against a rock the color of coal, and tried to keep his eyes open. Just when they’d begun to drift closed and his mind left the level of Realm known as Hell, Frank would think about life and death and his lids would snap open. No, it was too cold to sleep. If he fell asleep now while Storm slept, then the two of them might never wake up, and if they did, they might wake up frozen solid.
Sleep when you have Charlie’s head on a pike.
He pushed himself up, knees popping audibly and almost echoing across the vast expanse of darkness. There was no sun in this place as far as Frank could see but above in the skies, a dim. Bluish — almost purple — light filtered through heavy black clouds.
He looked out to the city. In a weird way, it kind of reminded him of Gloomsville. But Frank was a country boy at heart only making the occasional trip to a big city when the monsters dragged him or his father out there. Even on the very few vacations he’d taken in his youth, he stayed at the lake where the buildings stood tall yet very far away from him. Frank chuckled then, remembering the mouth full of sand he’d taken as the redheaded Protector overpowered him. What a trip down memory lane. Just like the good old days. The water had been as black as Frank’s eyes and something like mutants emerged dripping wet and green with eyes and limbs in all the wrong places.
Yeah, the whole world had gone to Hell, not just Frank King.
The field to his right looked like it would house a few dry branches he could use as kindling for a fire. What a hoot, Hell without fire.
My oh my, how the tight-assed ones had been wrong about this place, he thought.
His joints creaked as he walked. In the field, Frank King felt like an archeologist. The branches and bramble he’d found were centuries old, it seemed. The dirt was more like dust. A bush had been uprooted and beneath it, the roots hung like frozen spider limbs. He leaned closer, intrigued by the design. They weren’t normal roots, but then again, this wasn’t a normal place.
With all his bones protesting, he knelt down, thinking maybe if he can detach the bush, he could start a fire as big as the ones his daddy used to make when the two of them camped out in the forest. The dusty dirt slipped through the cracks in his fingers like sand. Still, he swiped away as much as he could with his right while his left held the bush from knocking anymore loose dirt back into the hole. All he had to do was find the —
Frank’s chest seized up in pain. His heart pumped blood as fast as it was able to. There was no more roots as far as Frank could see, but there was a jaw bone. It gleamed white in an almost ha-ha-ha-way saying, ‘Sucks for you, motherfucker. You found me now you gotta deal with the consequences. Gotta deal with the terror I’m invoking in your puny, Mortal brain.’
Frank’s knees weakened on the spot and he fell into a lump of terrified man, heart still beating rapidly.
Get it together, Franky. What did you expect? Hell ain’t gonna be all sunshines and rainbows, you big idiot.
He took a deep breath.
Steady now. Steady.
His back popped this time as he pulled himself up and together. A small voice in his mind told him to go to the camp, go to Harold Storm. Frank could act as tough as he wanted, could brandish around a crossbow full of the sharpest arrows known to man, but would still never have the level of power a man dubbed as a Realm Protector would have. He was a stubborn old man, and he quieted that voice as fast as it came.
The jawbone was still there, still half-smiling at him. He took a numbed finger and began to brush away the dirt — never mind the bush, never mind the warmth of flames and fire. Maybe he could go back to school and become an archeologist if this whole hunter gig stopped working out for him — and let’s be honest, the monster hunter gig had stopped working long before it claimed Frank’s son as a victim.
The jawbone had been attached to a skull, the skull attached to a vertebrae, vertebrae to a skeleton. Frozen worms lingered in the dark pits which comprised the dead thing’s eye sockets. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen a skeleton, in fact, he’d seen plenty. It was an occupational hazard. Rufus Wentworth, a gruesome warlock out in the Smoky Mountains actually had a nice collection of skeletons in his downstairs closet. Of course, that had been something like twenty years ago. Poor soul collected them to combat his growing loneliness, kept them real nice and neat too. Tailored clothes, wigs, even painted a thin layer of clear nail polish over the bones to make them sparkle. All fine and dandy, Frank would’ve said had the Warlock not been collecting the bones since the early 1800s and had the skeletons not been victims of his own frazzled and almost uncontrollable magic.
The trip down memory lane almost had Frank pull the damn skeleton out himself just for company. Harold Storm didn’t talk too much anyway. Maybe he could turn the bones into a ventriloquist’s dummy or something. Another possible career path once Charlie had been gutted.
Frank laughed aloud, the sound carrying far.
“No, I’m not that crazy, not yet,” he whispered.
And he moved his hand out of the shallow grave and back toward the spidery roots dangling from the bottom of the dead bush. This time he didn’t linger. Half a bush would do; it would be enough to get a decent sized flame going, enough to warm him while he rested.
Because he was not crazy. He wasn’t like his father. He wasn’t like the voices inside of his head — voices that had disappeared since his little visit to the Lake Bar and Grill.
No, not crazy.
Sane.
Then, the skeleton spoke.
CHAPTER 3
“He’s not dead, I can feel it,” Sahara said to the robed figure standing with his back to the sea. They had not moved since Roberta left. Gone to traverse Existence, she had said. She’d show up when things calmed down, and she was sorry she couldn’t help more, but she just didn’t possess the courage and valor of a Realm Protector.
Sahara remembered thinking how all of that was nothing but a distinguished way to say she was scared. Harold Storm did not possess any skill with a blade, and didn’t even possess his own blade, but a stranger’s instead. And as the door to the Forbidden Realm known to the people of earth as Hell closed, Harold wasted no time cha
rging in.
Stupid? Maybe. But scared? Never.
Now it was just Sahara and Felix like it had been for so many centuries. Protecting the Realms, traveling the Clouds and the Mortal lands, making sure nothing would open the cell which should remain closed for all of eternity.
“I know he’s not dead,” Felix said. “Harold Storm is stronger than even I envisioned.” A hint of a smile showed in his white beard. Perhaps, Sahara thought, there might even be a sparkle in the ancient Wizard’s eyes. A sparkle she had not seen in at least a hundred years. The Wizard who had raised her with the help of a woman who Sahara only knew as Mom for four years had died on the beach nearly five days ago.
Now he was back, thank the Realms.
“I don’t want to die either,” Sahara said.
“Isn’t that the goal of us all? To stay alive.”
“Yes. But where do we go? Where do we go that’s safe.” Sahara looked up to the sky. Minutes ago it’d taken the color of fire as if some pyromaniac doused the ceiling above Gloomsville with gasoline and struck a match. Now it somehow looked worse. Black and cracked. Crumbling. Soon it would fall and Sahara and Felix would be crushed beneath it.
“We go to Hell.”
“The gate closed. And then it disappeared. We can’t go there.”
Felix smirked and walked forward. “There’s other ways to Hell than through a Shadow Eater’s gate. You forget, my dear Sahara, that I — ”
“Helped build that dreadful place,” Sahara said, cutting Felix off and almost matching his deep voice that was always tinged with sadness when bringing up his past with Hell.
Felix rolled his eyes.
“There’s gotta be another way into the city. A way where we won’t have to walk through the Wastelands.”
“Afraid not,” Felix said. He walked past her, robes billowing in the dying, Mortal air. “Come, let’s go get our ticket. They’ll be ushering them in as we speak.”
Deathbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 3) Page 1
