Teucer ceased its whimpering and fell limp in Alex's grip, surrendering itself to whatever was to come next. Octavian decided they all could learn by the imp's example. He tightened his grip on the handle of his sword — its blade so bloody that he could not longer tell which side of the blade was which — and entered the nexus, as the others followed.
The world shifted around Octavian as he left Hell behind. Four or five steps, and he emerged into another world, in the devastated lobby of a hospital, judging by the insignia on the wall. The portal he'd stepped through had been sculpted from the corpses of the freshly dead, and Octavian let the horror of their mutilation envelope him. A pair of yellow-fleshed demons with long arms and three scimitar-like bladed fingers on each hand had been left to guard the portal.
With a wave of his hand and a muttered breath, Octavian turned the one on his left to stone. The other began to turn just as Alex came through the portal with a squeaking Teucer clutched in her hands, and Octavian stepped forward and brought his sword around in an arc that sliced off the top four inches of the demon's skull. It flopped to the ground with a wet slap.
Octavian turned toward the outer wall of the lobby, where all of the windows had been blown out and a cool autumn wind swept in. He counted a dozen demons lined up at the windows, watching the spectacle of a towering, tentacled, mantis-like Demon Lord dragging itself into this world with a screeching wail that reverberated across the sky like the death cry of a murdered god. Only one of them turned at the sound of the sentry hitting the floor, and its eyes went wide as it watched Kazimir, Charlotte, and Squire follow Alex and Teucer through the portal.
"Son of a —" Squire muttered. "What did I do?"
Octavian pointed his sword and summoned a bolt of pure magical force from within. Green static buzzed around the hilt of the sword and then arced from the end of the blade and blew the demon who'd spotted them through the shattered windows, its back breaking bits of window frame as it went.
The other demons in the lobby turned toward them, startled, and the Shadows waded into battle. Kazimir and Charlotte attacked, but Alex hesitated just long enough to take Teucer in both hands and twist, snapping his neck with a crack. She tossed him to the ground and glanced at Octavian.
"Imps are treacherous," she said. "He'd have found some way to pay us back."
She was right, of course, but still Octavian didn't like it. Teucer had been a demon, but Octavian had given his word.
A shambling, razor-haired demon lumbered at him, gnashing its teeth. Octavian could have turned it to stone or ice if he'd had just a second to think about it, but with a sword in his hand he was a different man. He had been a warrior long before he had become a Shadow or a sorcerer, and old habits died hard. He dodged the demon's claws and cut it across the abdomen, splitting its belly.
Then he left the others to the immediate task of eliminating the other demons in the lobby and turned to Squire.
The hobgoblin hadn't moved. He stood staring at the portal they'd come through, and Octavian blinked as he realized that something had happened. The portal had died. Through the corpse archway, he could see the other end of the lobby. This wasn't a doorway anymore. The arch had begun to collapse, cadavers shifting, sliding against one another. Octavian flinched as the broken, flayed body of a teenage boy dropped from the upper part of the arch and landed with a crack of breaking bone.
"What happened?" Octavian asked.
"No idea," Squire said. "I felt it shut right as I came through. Almost sucked me back through. Pulled free just in time, but it was a near thing."
"A puzzle for later." Octavian pointed at the deep shadows behind the upended registration desk. "You need to go."
Squire shot him a hard look. "Plan B."
"We've got to stop Lazarus, whatever it costs."
"Only if he agrees," Squire replied, but he had already turned away.
Octavian watched as Squire raced into those dark shadows and vanished, not quite certain if the hobgoblin would return. No matter the outcome of the battle to come, he knew that Squire would never forgive him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Phoenix's World
Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York, USA
Phoenix knew she was dying. She lay on her back with one leg broken and bent beneath her. Allison had twisted as they fell to take most of the impact, but Phoenix's left leg had been tangled with the vampire's and the snap of her bones had resonated in her mind even as the impact jarred her. Pain had blacked her out and now she found herself looking at the night sky, darkness at the edges of her vision as her breath came in ragged, gurgling gasps.
"I'm sorry," a voice said. "I wasn't fast enough."
Allison's face moved into view above her and, lost somewhere in her own drifting thoughts, Phoenix thought it so peculiar that such a lovely woman could be a monster. The vampire looked formidable, yes, but her eyes were full of what seemed decades' worth of regret. They were so human.
Fast enough, Phoenix thought. For some reason that seemed funny. These vampires were so fast her eyes had been barely able to track them, but still Allison had not arrived in time to keep the demon from slamming Phoenix against the wall of her father's hospital room, from crushing her. From killing her.
She cocked her head slightly to the right and spikes of pain stabbed her through the chest and back. Deep pain, not muscular. She had hurt herself in the past, broken a couple of ribs and torn muscles, but this — oh, this was nothing at all like that. Once she had owned an antique clock, an heirloom that she had inherited from her great-grandfather at the age of nine. Too young for such a beautiful, precious item, but apparently she had often admired it when visiting the old man with her mother, and he had wanted little Fee to have it. Within days of his funeral, she had accidentally knocked it from her bureau. The glass had broken, but glass could be replaced, so she had not been overly concerned until she had picked it up and heard little bits of the clock's mechanisms rattling around inside.
The demon that had smashed her against the wall had shattered her inner workings just the way she'd broken her great-grandfather's clock, and her mechanisms were rattling inside of her.
Her fingers were cold. She could not feel her broken leg aside from the screaming pain in her left hip.
Phoenix blinked, and the world went away.
Blinked again, and saw stars.
"You still with me?" Allison asked.
The night sky filled with distant screams and sirens and the ground trembled beneath Phoenix and she knew these were the sounds and feelings of Hell beginning to spread its influence. As she lay here dying, others were dying not far away. But how many?
"Hey," Allison said, and nudged her.
Phoenix tried to scream but could only cough, which set broken bones moving in her chest and gave her a fresh rush of pain that lit up like fireworks in her head. Through some miracle of cruelty, she managed to stay conscious as the pain stabbed into her and her light cough brought a burble of thick spittle out of her mouth to slide down her cheek. The copper stink of blood filled her nostrils and she knew it had come from inside her.
Coughing up blood, she thought. Not long, now.
"What's your name?" Allison asked.
"Fee. I mean . . . Phoenix."
"Phoenix. That's a great name. Cleansing fire, rebirth and redemption. You could do a lot worse."
"Did it work?" Phoenix managed to ask.
Allison glanced back up at the hospital, and Phoenix realized they were not where they had fallen but fifty yards away just at the edge of the woods at the back of the hospital. At some point, while Phoenix had been unconscious, Allison had moved her . . . but not far.
"They haven't come after us," Allison said. "If Kuromaku had killed them all, he'd have joined us by now. He's either been killed or captured. Either way, Lazarus would have come after us — or sent someone after us — unless he encountered a sudden huge distraction. I'd guess having his portals all slam shut would qualify. So, yeah, I'd say it
probably worked or we'd be dead right now."
Phoenix thought she might be smiling. She certainly intended to smile, but could no longer tell if her facial muscles were obeying her brain's commands. Tiny black motes like dust floated across her visions and the shadows encroaching on the periphery of her eyesight continued to spread.
"Soon enough," she thought she said.
Allison frowned but didn't argue. Phoenix figured she had seen death up close often enough to know it when it lay broken and bleeding in front of her. It should have felt like victory for Phoenix. Her father's remains had been purified by fire. The demons couldn't use his flesh anymore. But somehow . . .
"It's not . . . enough," she tried to say.
"I know," Allison said, placing a gentle hand on her forehead. "I'm sorry."
"Lazarus . . . Naberus . . . they have to pay," Phoenix choked out, frothy blood bubbling from her lips. Her voice sounded like little more than a whisper, even in her own ears.
Inside of Phoenix, an ember burned, fueled party by hate and anger, but at its core was love. Her mother had given her a foundation of righteous love and her father, though absent for much of her life, had helped to nurture that love in recent years through his faith in her. Could she quit now? Could she leave the fight against such evil to others?
What choice do you have? she asked herself.
Allison gazed kindly down upon her. Phoenix frowned, swallowed back some of her own blood, and found an answer.
"You," she gurgled.
"What?" Allison asked. "What did you —"
"Can you . . . is it like the stories?" Phoenix managed. "Can you make me . . . like you?"
Allison stared at the dying woman. The blood she kept coughing up had streaked both of her cheeks and pooled on either side of her head, soaking into her blond hair. She had minutes to live, but Allison felt frozen.
"Please," Phoenix gurgled.
A wave of nausea passed through Allison. She shook her head slowly, and then more rapidly.
"I can't," Allison managed. "I'm sorry, I . . ."
Phoenix's eyes narrowed. Even dying, with consciousness fleeting, somehow she had interpreted the reply correctly. Allison could see in Phoenix's eyes that she understood the nuance in her inflection. It wasn't the mechanics of it — Allison could turn Phoenix into a vampire if she chose to do so.
Though dying, Phoenix still had the ability to cry. Tears filled her eyes and slid down her temples, parallel to the trails of blood.
"Why?"
Allison had too much respect for the woman — for her loss and her courageous spirit — to turn away, so she kept her gaze locked on Phoenix's, but she did not reply. Images shot through her mind, memories that seared her soul. Though she had been in love with a man who was already a Shadow, Allison had chosen to remain human — to stay mortal. Then she had been abducted by a vampire named Hannibal, who had tortured and raped her, and who had turned her just so he could continue to torture and rape her for as long as he desired.
"I can . . . fight," Phoenix said, the puddling blood making a circle at the edges of her hair, now. A crimson halo. "I'm . . . not afraid. We had —" she coughed, features etched in pain, and a fresh spasm of blood bubbled from her lips. "Years ago, the dead came back . . . to life. The Uprising. Zombies . . . killed thousands. I helped . . . end it."
The dying woman fixed Allison with a flinty, unyielding look and spoke one brief sentence without the moist, guttural accent of blood in her throat.
"You need me."
Allison tried to force images of rape and torture from her mind, replacing them with thoughts of love. She'd had the greatest love of her life even after being turned. She'd suffered ugly betrayal but also found great loyalty and friendship, and she had saved countless lives. Done so much good.
"This happened . . ." Phoenix continued, though her eyes could no longer focus and her head had begun to loll to one side. Death had crept closer. "I was here and I . . . got away. Could have . . . run. I came back to burn . . . my father's body. To . . . help. How many people would — would do that?"
Allison stared at her. Once, Peter Octavian had told her the story of the night that he himself had been transformed into a Shadow. They had been within the walls of Constantinople as the Turks besieged the city. Karl von Reinman had offered Octavian the opportunity to slaughter as many of the enemy as he liked, and made no secret about what he would be sacrificing, the life of darkness and bloodthirst he would be choosing. That night, von Reinman had asked how many would accept the gift and curse he was offering, and Octavian had replied.
That reply echoed in Allison's mind now.
"How many . . ." Phoenix tried to choke out again.
Allison shushed her, took her hand.
"One," she said.
One.
And she bent to drink of the dying woman's blood, and to share of her own.
Danny's World
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Over the years that he had spent in Mr. Doyle's house, Danny Ferrick had become a fervent reader. As his appearance became more monstrous and his public forays fewer, he had spent many evenings in a wing chair in the corner of what had once been Mr. Doyle's library. One entire section of shelving remained bare, the removal of the occult tomes that had lined those shelves one of Mr. Doyle's final acts before he vanished from Danny's life. But Danny had no interest in arcane texts. The magic he sought from books came from their pages, from the stories that inspired him and created fanciful landscapes in his mind.
Tonight he sat sprawled in that wing chair, one of the few in the house that did not bow beneath his weight, and enjoyed the texture of the book in his hands and the smell of the old, yellowing paper. Candles burned on plates and in sconces around him, plenty of light for his inhuman eyes to read by, and their golden glow cast an eerie pall upon the room. Apropos, he thought, for reading Ray Bradbury on a night in October.
Every year at this time he read a couple of Bradburys, one of which would always be The Halloween Tree, which he had finished two days ago. The second choice varied from year to year, and tonight he sat completely immersed in that other selection. The room had been stripped of any objects of power, but there were still carved knick knacks and mementoes of Mr. Doyle's life in the room, and they made peculiar shadows in the flickering glow of candle light that permeated the room. A draft that blew through the house and the scurry of an animal in the corner of the room made Danny jump. The scritch-scratch of its claws on the wood made him realize he had a rat for company, but then he heard the hiss of a cat, and he thought they both must have discovered some space behind the walls that they believed had been reserved as the personal coliseum for their combat. Danny had seen mangy stray cats in the house before, and if this was the torn-eared ginger he had spotted a week or so ago, he knew the rat had no chance.
He listened to them scuffle for half a minute and then the thumping and scratching died down and he returned to his reading. It comforted him to sit there amongst the books. Over the past year or so he had begun to make great stacks of them, pulling those that interested him off of the shelves and creating his own strange catalog of preference, piles of both fiction and non-fiction that he had decided to read. The very presence of those stacks made him feel a lovely sort of pressure, a weight of expectation that was one of the few things he could focus on when he needed to clear his head.
Sometimes the books comforted him, as they had belonged to Mr. Doyle, but other times they only served to make him lonelier than ever.
The scratch of nails upon wood came again, but this time it hadn't come from any crawlspace. Danny frowned and placed a finger in his book. He looked up just in time to see the torn-eared ginger dart across the library. It scraped itself against one of Danny's to-be-read piles and the tower of books collapsed, spilling across the floor.
Danny hissed at the cat and it froze, arched its back and turned to stare at him. Spitting and hissing in return, it continued its retreat warily. He loo
ked like the sort of creature who would eat a cat, he knew, but that was only because he might actually do it. He didn't think he ever had, but his mind slipped sometimes, gray areas blotting out places where memory ought to have been, so he could not swear that he had never partaken.
"Get out of here, you little shit," he snarled, his voice low.
The cat slithered beneath Mr. Doyle's desk, hid there a moment, and then bolted across open space to the door, vanishing into the hall. Danny hoped it didn't piss in the house but knew that it probably would. The place had become an elegant sort of zoo, a well-appointed urban animal shelter, where pigeons and squirrels and rats and even stray pets came to nest or hide or, in the case of a Doberman with blood on its matted fur, to have babies. The animals scattered when he came near, but it gave him a bit of solace that they did not seem terrified of him.
Danny settled in again, searching the page for the passage where he had left off. He found it and remembered it quite well as one of his favorites. So much a favorite, in fact, that this page had been turned down and certain bits underlined for emphasis, so he would not forget to appreciate them each time he came upon them again.
"Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town," he read aloud to himself, "is the one carrying the biggest load of sin . . . On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that's your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two."
A soft exhalation came from the shadows behind Mr. Doyle's desk and Danny frowned, glancing over. The cat had fled, and he wondered what manner of vermin haunted the library now.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes," a familiar voice grumbled. "Always one of my favorites."
King of Hell (The Shadow Saga) Page 24
