Harold blinked, tried to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, make sure the venom wasn’t causing outlandish hallucinations. But the bullet still spun in suspended motion, hanging there, a foot from the middle of his forehead.
Rick lowered his pistol. His mouth spread wide.
“What the fu — ”
A shadow emerged from the floor, features indistinguishable, clutching a cylindrical tube in one hand, and something lumpy in the other.
Charlie’s laughter echoed in the fresh calm of the terminal.
“Storm, Storm, tsk, tsk, tsk. You just don’t know when to quit, do you? Just don’t know when to fold.”
Harold stood there, reached a hand out to the bullet. It would be smoking hot, laced with Demon venom, but he did it anyway. Plucked it out of the air, and the thing had stopped spinning.
“Oh-ho-ho, Big Man on Campus now, are we?” Charlie said. “Watch out.”
Harold sucked in a shaky breath, brought his Deathblade up in front of his face, tensed his muscles, got ready for what he thought would be the final showdown between Protector and Asshole.
CHAPTER 29
“Holy shit. It can’t be — is it? Is it you?” Ricky said. He looked up to the looming, black shadow with glistening eyes.
Ben had even taken off his gas mask, gaped at Charlie.
“You’re a Shadow Eater. You’re one of them,” Ricky said. “Master, I give you my life. I give you my soul. I have done your bidding. Done as you wished, as you said in my fever dreams. I rounded up your supper, trapped them in here with intentions of sending us all to Hell.” He took a step forward, dropped to his knees, started waving his hands in a pathetic attempt at bowing to Charlie’s feet.
“We are not worthy,” Ben said. And Harold was surprised at how deep the man’s voice was. He was nothing but a skinny thing who also looked fresh out of high school.
“Quiet, you fools,” Charlie said. He locked eyes with Harold, then said to him: “Your key, please. I see you are in no position to battle me, and even if you were one hundred percent, you would still not have a chance.” He took a step, simultaneously shedding the shadows that shrouded him in darkness. The cylindrical weapon, Harold saw and was not surprised to see, happened to be his own Hellblade still sheathed.
But the other item in his hand made Harold tighten his jaw. Snakes squirmed in his belly again, but he held down the sickness.
It was Sahara’s bloody hand, and Charlie tossed it, landing at his feet with a wet slap. “You like that?” he asked. “There’s more to come. I’ve got a million pieces of her just waiting to be put back together.”
Harold exhaled. Didn’t speak.
“Please, your Majesty, please take us with you. We will even help you slay the Protector,” Rick interrupted, voice muffled by his tucked-away position.
“Please, Oh Great One,” Ben said.
“Enough!” Charlie yelled.
The Hellblade came out in a dark flash of iron, metal rang out. Three quick motions, and Rick was headless. It thumped onto the marble floor, rolled into the darkness.
Ben shook, unable to speak, choking sounds clicked in his throat.
“Boo,” Charlie said.
And Ben took off, running — scared of death when death knocked on his front door.
“Ahh, there,” Charlie said, smirking. “Peace and quiet.”
Harold’s lip snarled. Peace wasn’t an option. Charlie knew it as much as he did. Blood would be shed and it would be the normal red blood of mortals.
Ink black would flood the terminal. Flood the streets. From who it came from, Harold was still unsure.
“Really Storm, you don’t look up to the task. My boys did well. Real well. The venom is only temporary. It’ll run its course and then you’ll feel normal, but the visions and the voices will never really leave, will they?”
The voices. The visions. His father. The lost childhood. The shadows. Somehow, it was worse than the fire simmering under the thin layers of burnt skin. His blade was out, yet thinking of that slimy whisper rattling around his head prevented him from lifting it, from defending himself.
“Here’s the deal, Storm: You’re a powerful warrior. Would’ve made a heck of a Protector had the circumstances been right. You know how it goes: wrong place, wrong time. It’s as real as the monsters in ours closets. So I’m gonna spare you and I’m gonna give you back your girl because she wasn’t too good in bed anyway — ”
Harold looked on with cold, flinty eyes, laced with an ancient evil he’d not known existed, that began to bubble up inside of him. If his nostrils were whole on his burnt face, they’d be flaring. He felt like a raging bull, trapped in the confines of an electrically charged pen. The pain held him back instead. That had been the point of the venom, the point of the Disciples — to slow him down. How lovely. They couldn’t stop the beast, all you could do was hope to contain him.
Well, Harold had no plans of being contained then, as the shadowy figure stood before him. A lifetime of confinement, of failure building up was about to burst out of him like a nuclear explosion. Demon venom-induced handicap be damned.
He’s coming. Almost here — the Demon’s voice.
The rush of blood drowned out the whispers.
Then: He’s here.
Harold rushed Charlie. Their blades met once more, and not for the last time. The steel clinked, sharpness scraped off of each other.
Charlie disappeared.
The shadows took over, temperature dropped lower. Harold saw his breath fogging out in front of him in the smothered orange light.
And then the lights kicked on with a deep hum from something that sounded like a generator.
Sahara sat in front of him, shackled to a chair, the whites of her eyes the only pure thing in the barren room, air whistling from her nostrils.
CHAPTER 30
Was this Hell? A dark room where the girl Harold had begun to feel things for was in jeopardy, missing a hand, blood caked on her smooth skin, the look of fear written on her face in permanent marker?
If it wasn’t Hell, it was pretty close.
He raced over to her, not even thinking about how he got here, or where the man who put him through all of this had gone.
“Sahara,” he said.
She spoke, words muffled by the duct tape wrapped around her mouth. Her eyes never wavered, never threatened to blink. His right hand worked at the duct tape like a virgin fumbling at his prom date’s bra hooks, and like that prom date rendezvous, he was failing. So he brought the point of his Deathblade up as calmly as his rapid-beating heart, but careful not to make a scratch.
The duct tape fell off, fluttered in the cool air.
“He’s here,” she said, but it was not in the voice of Sahara. It was the voice inside of his head, the one drowning out the Wolves.
He fell back, screaming. The floor moved underneath his hands. He looked down. Cold black snakes twisted, stacked on top of each other, gripping tighter and tighter around his wrists, climbing up his blade. Harold couldn’t blink, couldn’t move. Could only watch, feel their sliminess, the scales, and imminent death.
“He’s here,” Sahara repeated in that voice.
“No,” Harold shouted. “No, Sahara wake up.” He took his eyes off of the snake, did his best to ignore their touch, the hisses. He saw the same inky black running though Sahara’s skin. Lines ran up her neck, twisted, spiraled, looked like black lightning cutting across a white sky. Then they were gone and she was wrenching. More black snakes hung from her mouth like rotten spaghetti. She screamed with enough intensity to make Harold’s blood curdle.
“Ah, they don’t call it home court advantage for nothing,” Charlie said behind him, calm-voiced.
Harold spun around. Nothing. But when he looked back to where Sahara was, she still sat there, but now the room had changed. They were in the center of a huge Roman-style arena, except it had a Hellacious twist to it. Rusty, spiked metal rose up from all around them. Demons watched with hunger in their
eyes. Beady, black eyes, the color of the poison. Gruesome, bumpy faces. Thousands upon thousands. They jeered. They called. Their voices combined to make a sound like wood chippers eating concrete. The atmosphere beyond the towering coliseum was like staring in a void, an abyss that threatened to suck away your soul.
And the flames, how they roared, crackled, and burned around them all. Not casting light, or heat, but only casting pure hatred, pure malice. They were enough to burn away Harold’s adrenaline, enough to cause the Wolves to yelp as if Hell had just stepped on their tails. Not good. It was not good at all.
Harold couldn’t take it, and he lunged forward. Crunch. Another step. Crunch. Bones — human bones — lined the black dirt floor like a sadistic rug.
“Quiet, quiet,” Charlie said, voice booming. “Order!”
A balcony emerged from the wall behind Sahara, maybe a hundred feet up, hovering over the crowd of Demons. Charlie wore a black gown like a judge, a gavel in one hand that was obsidian.
“Guilty!” Charlie yelled, slamming the gavel down.
The Demons roared in approval.
“You’re guilty, asshole!” Harold yelled up. He walked forward, ran his right hand through Sahara’s hair. Their eyes met, and he’d tried to give her a look that said everything would be okay.
Now he stood directly under the balcony.
Another shadow emerged.
“I thought I killed you,” a woman said. “Lucky ducky.” She laughed a shrill giggle, and Charlie wrapped his arm around her. Harold had never felt a rage like that before. A rage that would have him clawing through miles of broken glass and rusty nails just to get at the Eater’s throats.
“Why don’t you come down here and give it another go!” Harold shouted.
The laughter died.
“Is that a challenge, Mortal?” the woman asked.
“Damn right.”
Charlie waved a hand, and the Demons roared, cutting off whatever he was going to say. He waved them off. “What do you think is holding me back from ripping you apart right now? I could send my loyal army upon you, and they’d tear you apart like starving lions.”
Then came the haughty laughter from the woman, the spike in anger rising in Harold.
How small he felt. How insignificant. The odds were stacked against him a million to one, maybe even half with the venom poisoning him.
“Battle me like a man,” Harold said. “Show your loyal army they are led by a strong leader, and not some petulant dickbag who hides behind the skirt of his ugly girlfriend.”
The woman’s eyes widened, the grin slapped right off of her face by the words. “Oh, my friend, you think I’m ugly? How about this?”
She disappeared from the balcony, and Harold’s ears were flooded with the whoops and whistles from the crowd. Bones snapped under her feet as she moved on Harold quick. Her blade was a lot like Charlie’s except it was jagged, looked like a lightning bolt and was so black, all the orange light in the arena seemed to be sucked right into it when she raised it up.
Harold blocked the blow, the steel kissed. But the hit was so hard, that a piece of his blade — basically, a piece of him — went flying into the dirt. She came at him more ferocious, but he dodged each swing — somehow, the whip of her sword blew right by his face.
Two more hits clashed, metal dinging. He couldn’t get his own attacks in because she just kept swinging and swinging until her face grew red. A plan formed in the scared recesses of his mind: wait until she got tired, and then make your move, until then, stay alive.
Opportunity struck when she missed, exposing the bare side of her knobby ribs and Harold did not let the opportunity slip away. He slid his blade against her as if he were unsheathing his weapon. It wasn’t much, but all he could manage to do without putting himself at risk of being skewered.
The skin sizzled and she cried out, fell on her knees, sending a half broken skull bone, yellowed and fragile, into a million shards. He advanced on her, his body screamed in protest. The poison tried its best to hold him back.
Demons stood up in unison. They all gasped like they were collectively sucker punched.
Harold brought his blade up, now jagged, the edge serrated and broken in spots like an old, rusty saw. He swung down, closed his eyes in anticipation of the blood spray, but it never came. Instead his arms rattled with the vibrations. Muscles flexed.
Charlie’s Hellblade hovered over the fallen Beth, and the look in his eye screamed crazy.
Harold spun away, ready for the oncoming storm.
“Let’s hope you die a little more honorably than your father,” Charlie said.
He nudged the woman out of the way, “Get the girl,” he said to her before she hobbled off. Harold could’ve chased her, should’ve chased her, but Charlie stood between him and Sahara.
The woman nearly crawled the distance to the chair, holding her side, black blood seeped out from beneath her clutched fingers. She took her blade, started running it across the gauze wrapped around Sahara’s stump. And Sahara’s mouth flew open. Her screams were drowned out by the cheering audience.
Charlie watched Harold with the fascination of a zoologist observing a new species of monkey.
Sahara’s blade was still intact. It stuck out like a stubborn thorn from a dying rose, bolted to the chair.
“Yes, my friend, you fell for the trap. But don’t be upset. Most Mortals would have. It’s what separates the natural Realm from our Realm. Her blade’s untouchable until you two are together. We could’ve put her out of her misery and not pumped her full of the venom, but where’s the fun in that? Where’s the evil? No. No. I want you to watch. I want you to savor every last bit of her spilling blood.”
Harold snapped, ran towards the woman sawing away at Sahara’s arm. But Charlie jumped in front of him. Their blades met. And Harold nearly fell from the force of the swinging Hellblade.
The crowd never quieted down, but they seemed to fade, the entire arena with it. He felt so lightheaded that he missed the next block, screamed out when the blade sliced through the air and stabbed his left shoulder. His skin smoked, clothes fizzled. And the blade — the Deathblade retracted with a dying howl from the Wolves. It was the Alpha Male; it was him.
He dropped to his knees, clutched the wound.
“No!” he shouted, barely heard over the roar of the crowd. “Don’t kill her!”
Charlie looked down on him. Took a few steps forward. His arms raised like a man lifting a heavy object through telekinesis. The whites of his eyes flickered, flames around him sparked and stuttered.
Harold could only watch until the words found his tongue again. The Wolves howled.
Maybe he was getting better, was taming the beasts.
“Circumventa Lu — ” he began to shout.
But Charlie’s voice drowned out his own in the slick tongue of Demon speech, and he threw the heavy air with all of his might.
Harold toppled over with the hit, neck straining. His lips clamped shut. He tried to pry them apart, but they were gone. Though the words were there, but they could no longer be uttered, would forever be confined to the tip of his tongue until Charlie cut the blade out and proclaimed the Hell Realm victorious — until death.
Harold could do nothing. The stray bones poked him in the back. His world faded out, then back in. The cheers from the Demons never fully disappearing. Charlie was a dark shadow hovering over him.
He lowered his sword, bent low, and shook his head. Knees popped when he sprung up and raised his Hellblade to the crowd. They cried out in agreement, in echoing victory.
Harold’s eyes fluttered. He gasped, he wheezed. Now was his chance if ever. There would not be another shot before the Hellblade gutted him.
Empty hands found a thick bone lodged underneath his thigh and he took it and swung upwards with all of his might, not caring what he hit, just hoping he’d hit something.
There was a solid thump. The bone had connected, knocked Charlie in the side of the shin. He fell
and more bones went flying.
Harold dug down deep, used the dying strength to get up. The blood in his face boiled, threatened to explode out of his skin. He still held the thick piece of skeleton, and once he was up, he brought it down on the Shadow Eater’s face. A swing weaker than he intended, but enough to cause Charlie’s tongue to loll out like a panting dog, and the black eyes to lose their glint.
The Hellblade had retracted and it laid next to the Eater. Harold’s legs pumped, and as he ran, he scooped up the hilt in one clanky motion. Running towards Sahara, towards the woman who picked away at his partner.
He had no immediate plan, but he knew he’d do everything in his power to save her, no matter what.
Beth had her sword pressed against Sahara’s wrist. She worked at it like a carpenter sawing a two by four.
The crowd was silent enough for Harold to hear the squishing, and the wetness of the moving blade. Sahara’s screams came at intervals. Like clockwork.
Harold ran and ran, but the stretch of dirt from where he knocked out Charlie to where Sahara sat stretched for what seemed like miles. It was like running in a nightmare. A very real and graphic nightmare. One he’d never forget.
When he reached the women, Beth had hardly noticed. She was too invested in extracting Sahara’s key. The flames towered over them all like tsunami waves. Demonic eyes glowed beyond the wall of fire.
Sahara’s face twisted in pain. Those deep, brown eyes looked lifeless, shined with tears. The way he looked upon her had caused Harold’s heart to break, fracture in two.
The Wolves were not howling in his head. The Deathblade he had begun to learn how to control disobeyed him, and he couldn’t speak, didn’t feel any lips upon his face, or teeth in his skull.
But he had Charlie’s blade.
He was the Alpha Male and the Alpha would not back down, lest his pack mates would follow his lead.
Your blood, Harold.
It was not the voice of the Demon.
The Protector’s blood.
Hellbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 1) Page 18
