“Go!” said Mammon. “And do not look back.”
Ostheim heard him, his head twisting to look down the stairs. The smile fell away, replaced with a look of fury that was as far from human as anything Pan had ever seen. Something throbbed out of him, a pulse of evil that made her want to reach inside and pull out her soul, to trample it to dust.
“Go!” Mammon yelled.
No.
Her anger was demonic, was forged from fire, from all those years of blind loyalty. How many people had she killed for him? How many lives had she ruined for him? How many people were being torn to pieces in hell because of what she had done for him? She was going to murder him. She was going to end him.
She took a step forward and so did Ostheim.
And he changed.
His head flipped open like his jaw was hinged, his mouth a gaping black hole. Something pushed its way out of it, something oil black and too big. It might have been a lamprey eel, its tip ringed with teeth, its body slick and black. It kept coming, exploding up from Ostheim’s maw—ten yards long, twenty, thirty, too long and too fat to have ever fit inside a human body.
Oh God.
It split into two, peeling from itself like a cheese string. Then again, and again, stretching into long, wet fingers. They all punched earthward, sliding down the steps so fast they were just a blur. Some cut to the side, feeling their way into the Engine.
The rest came right for them.
Pan ducked, feeling one of the huge black limbs thunder over her head. Another followed, the air growing dark and cold as their bulk blocked the firelight. They thumped into Mammon like charging bulls—two, three, six, ten of them now—one after the other, pounding him into the stone.
“Pan, we gotta go!” Marlow yelled, cutting between them, making for the stairs. Charlie was screaming Mammon’s name, his body erupting into flames again. He stretched out his arms and released a plume of fire that cut across the platform, engulfing the squirming mass of shapes that hid Mammon.
Above them, Ostheim roared. His body was torn in a dozen places, dark, clotted blood splattering the stairs. Pieces of his flesh were dropping away like old clothes as more shapes forced their way from him, tapeworm-thin. They whipcracked through the air in a frenzy, one punching through the stone floor inches from Pan, showering her in shrapnel.
It is mine.
The voice was everywhere and nowhere, echoing around her skull like a cathedral bell had been rung in there. She felt a hand on her arm, Marlow dragging her across the platform. Some of the limbs had embedded themselves in the floor, stuck there like ivy as they grew over the edge of the platform. The Engine seemed to be welcoming them, grinding to a halt to let them in.
It is mine.
“No!”
The nest of snakes next to the pool blew like it was packed with explosives, showering the platform with rancid pieces of black flesh. Mammon rose from the carnage, his body shifting and glitching like it was trying to pull itself out of the universe. He opened his hands and a wave of black light burst from him, so impossibly dark that it seemed the world there had been erased.
Ostheim screamed again—although he no longer had a mouth to scream from. The last of his body split away, shedding muscle and bone. Beneath was a mess of sinew shot through with what looked like copper and bronze, an insane union of organic and mechanical parts. It moved, fast, scuttling onto the wall like a spider. Its countless limbs whirled through the air, a hurricane of impossible flesh. Then they darted down toward Mammon again, scorpion tails trying to punch their way through him.
Mammon vanished into thin air, appearing again almost immediately on the other side of the pool. He scooped a hand through the air and hurled another missile of nothing, an antimatter bomb that burned into the wall where Ostheim had been. The creature was already on the move, the stone splitting and dissolving where it was struck. More rocks fell from overhead, some as big as cars.
“Pan, come on!” Marlow was screaming at her.
She tore her eyes away from Mammon, focused on getting across the platform. They were at the stairs now, Marlow stumbling up them, Charlie behind her and pushing her forward on a wave of heat. A crunch from the platform and Pan couldn’t not look. It was like her head was on a string, somebody else tugging at it.
Ostheim propelled himself from the wall, his immense insect bulk landing on Mammon. Those limbs rose up as one, then stabbed down—so hard that the platform groaned, cracking away from the wall. One side tipped, water slopping out of the pool and hissing as it poured into the fires that raged there. Mammon fought back, waves of negative light pouring off him, each one ripping away some of Ostheim’s skin, gouging out chunks of flesh, sending limbs flying.
But for everything that Mammon cut away, something else grew. Things were pouring out of Ostheim now, liquid-quick but as solid as obsidian. The limbs pounded the rock with industrial speed—so fast that Pan couldn’t bear to look at them. The noise of them was like a thousand pneumatic drills at once, a cloud of smoke pouring from them, smoke and blood, misting into the ruptured air.
“No!” Charlie raged, burning so fiercely that the stairs were melting around him. He fired out another jet of molten heat, right into Ostheim’s back, but he didn’t even seem to feel it. The noise of it, of Ostheim’s attack, of the howling Engine, was too much. Pan felt deaf from it.
And yet something still rose from the madness, a voice whisper-weak and haunting.
Go, Pan. And find her. You do not have long.
“Come on!” yelled Marlow from the top of the stairs. Pan turned, tripped, sprawling. She climbed the rest on all fours because she couldn’t trust her legs to hold her. Marlow grabbed her, helping her up. He ducked through the door but she couldn’t bring herself to follow, not yet. She looked down, the view from here like the boxes in a theater, everything perfectly clear.
Ostheim was a hulking mass, the body of a vast spider but at least thirty limbs snaking from him. Only a couple were still pounding at the ground, because there was nothing left to pound. Mammon was a scattered mess of parts, a butcher’s waste bag scattered over the ruined platform. Pan could make out half a skull, a flap of face still attached, one eye roving madly. It seemed to see her, or maybe she just imagined it.
Find her.
Then a pincer-like limb skewered it and the skull shattered like glass. Ostheim lumbered off the remains of Mammon, each of his limbs darting over the edge of the platform and plunging into the smoking mess of the Engine.
“No!” Charlie yelled, a voice made of heat and fire. He loosed another strike, one that melted rock, that made the air burn bright. Ostheim’s head—just a tumorous lump on the bulk of his body, the vague shape of a face there—twisted up, the flames washing over it like they were nothing but water. He dismissed Charlie with a snort, then crawled over the edge of the platform, the Engine opening up and welcoming him like a mother bear welcomes a cub.
Charlie looked up at Pan, and even though he was an inferno she could see the emotion there, the grief pouring off him.
“There’s nothing we can do,” she said. “Come on.”
For a moment he burned even more fiercely, the metal staircase squealing in the heat. Then the flames snapped off and he ran up the last few steps, the heat ebbing from him. Together they took one last look at the platform, at the remains of Mammon, at the shape that scuttled into the Engine, that stretched out its limbs into the smoking chaos and began to mend it.
Then Marlow called to them and Pan turned away, Mammon’s voice still echoing inside her head.
Find her.
LET’S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE
They crossed the room in a heartbeat, piling into the elevator. Marlow jabbed a hand on the button, waiting for one of those limbs to snake through the door, to wrap itself around his throat. He pressed the button again, and again.
“Come on, you piece of garbage.”
The doors rumbled shut and the elevator started to rise, whining in protest. Marl
ow slid down the elevator wall. It was too much. Something was rising inside him, something huge—surely too big, too powerful. It felt like a tsunami, and even with all the power of the world inside him he could not hold it back. He curled his legs up, pushed his face into his knees so that nobody would see the tears. But there was nothing he could do to hide the sobs that racked him, making his whole body shake. It was too much, too much.
He felt somebody sit down next to him. Somebody else sat on the other side, kicking off so much heat he might have been leaning against a radiator. Hands wrapped themselves around him from both sides, tight. No words, they just held him until the ocean calmed.
Of all the things Charlie and Pan had done for him, Marlow thought, this was the one that truly saved his life.
He scrubbed the tears away on his pants, blinked up at Pan. She was crying, too, her eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion and confusion. Sniffing, she gave him one last squeeze and let go. Marlow felt weirdly naked without the weight of her arms on his shoulders, like she had taken a piece of him with her.
Charlie was naked, and when he leaned in for another hug Marlow pushed him away.
“Dude, not until you’ve got pants on.”
And the thought of it—of sitting next to his naked best friend in the elevator from hell—made something else rush up his throat, a bark of lunatic laughter that exploded wetly from his nose.
“Gross,” said Pan, getting unsteadily to her feet. Her mouth was a thin gray line. Marlow didn’t want to know what she was going through right now, the horror of finding out she was one of the bad guys. He turned back to Charlie.
“Why were you prancing around in the altogether, though?”
Charlie sniffed, his tears evaporating from his skin. He looked down at himself as if truly noticing for the first time.
“I was wearing clothes,” he said. “They must have burned off.”
“Any excuse,” said Marlow as Charlie got to his feet, everything hanging out. “You got no shame?”
Charlie shrugged his skinny shoulders, his grin lighting up the elevator.
“Hey, it’s what God gave me.”
“He didn’t give you much,” said Pan.
“Hey!” Charlie said, finally slapping a hand to his crotch. His cheeks were glowing so much, Marlow thought he was about to burst into flames again.
The elevator rattled upward ridiculously slowly, grinding against the walls. How could it be taking so long?
“You think Ostheim’s coming after us?” Marlow asked.
Pan shook her head. “You saw him, all he cares about is the Engine. Christ. How could I have been so stupid?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Charlie. “He’s been doing this for so long. He’s fooled so many people.”
She shot him a look that could have blasted him out the side of the elevator shaft.
“I…” She swallowed, the fury leaving her face, leaving her with nothing. She put her head against the wall, her fists clenching and unclenching, over and over. “I was so sure. I never even thought to question him.”
“I don’t get it,” Marlow said. “We saw him, like a few hours ago. He was just this old dude. He had a comb-over, for God’s sake.”
“You must have felt him, though,” said Charlie. “Mammon always said that something as evil as Ostheim can be hidden from the eye, but never from the soul.”
Marlow thought back to that morning—it felt like a million years ago. When they’d arrived at the church in Prague he’d felt like his insides were being minced. But that had been the Red Door, hadn’t it?
“He used it to mask himself,” said Pan, slapping herself on the forehead. “That’s why he arranged to meet us there, so the stench of the door would hide him. Dammit, the door wasn’t even there anymore, why didn’t we just think?”
The elevator rattled so hard that Marlow thought it was going to come loose and drop them all to their deaths. Then the gears whined and it shuddered to a halt. Pan wrenched open the gates. Through them was the bullpen, drenched in darkness and silence. Marlow had been so caught up in the fight downstairs that he’d completely forgotten about the others. He shared a look with Pan, then watched her stick her head through the opening.
“Herc?” she said quietly. “You out—”
A gunshot, ricocheting off the outside of the elevator. Pan staggered in, a spark tearing itself from her fingers and zigzagging from ceiling to floor. Past the crack of thunder Marlow could hear somebody shouting inside the bullpen.
“Sorry, sorry, my bad!” Herc yelled.
Then his ugly face was there, peering inside. He offered them something that was probably a smile.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you all alive,” he said. “Thought it was him. I thought it was … Ostheim.” Marlow saw his face crumple under the weight of the truth.
“Then it’s a good job you’re an awful shot,” said Pan, barging past him. Marlow pushed himself up the wall and followed her. It was so dark in the bullpen that he could barely see, the light from the elevator a copper penny in an ocean of ink. It wasn’t a bad thing, though. The air was heavy with the stench of gunpowder and blood, and he could make out collections of broken parts scattered in the black. Whatever had happened up here, it had been bad.
“I’m sorry, Pan,” said Herc. “I couldn’t—”
Pan snapped around, jabbing a finger at him.
“Did you know?” she said, baring her teeth like a feral animal. “Did you know?”
“No!” said Herc, shaking his head, making sure to look her right in the eye. “I didn’t know, Pan. Ostheim showed up here and I thought … I thought he was here to help us, but he just … Christ, he just killed them all. Us, them. He didn’t care, he just mowed right through us on his way to the elevator. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She swallowed, then scrubbed the back of a hand over her face.
“Holy guacamole,” said Truck, lumbering from the shadows. He scooped Pan up in a bear hug, putting her down again only when she started slapping him on the shoulders in protest. “Man, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. What happened?”
“Ostheim,” spat Pan. “That asshole. I can’t … I just can’t…”
“Hey, kiddo, don’t go there,” said Herc. “None of us saw it coming.”
“But why?” she said, toe-to-toe with the big guy. “Why did nobody question it? Why didn’t you question it, Herc? You were supposed to be watching out for us. They died, Herc. All of them. And for what?”
Herc turned away, blinking. For all the gristle and all the scars, he looked about twelve years old in the half-light.
“Hey,” said Truck. He rested a hand on her shoulder and she shook it away. He tried again, more forcefully this time. “Hey, Pan. We can talk about this later. Right now, we got to go.”
He was right. The room was trembling, like the beginning of an earthquake. Marlow could barely feel it, but it was there, tickling the soles of his feet.
“He’s right,” said a voice, another person emerging from the dark. A girl dressed in black, a shock of red hair. “Ostheim will already be opening the gates.”
“You,” Pan said, jabbing a finger. The redhead stood firm.
“I what? You better watch the next thing that comes out of your mouth. You brought him here, you did this.”
Pan’s face crumpled, her shoulders sagging under a hundred tons of truth. She didn’t reply. How could she? The redhead was right. Pan had done this, and Marlow, and Herc and Truck. They might as well have opened the gates to hell themselves.
“Where is Mammon?” the redhead said. Nobody answered, and she put her hands to her face, groaning into them. “No, no, no.”
“Come on,” Herc said gently. “I don’t know how long we’ve got, but it isn’t much.”
“I took out some of it,” said Charlie. “I burned some of that bastard machine into dust.”
“Yeah?” said Herc.
Charlie nodded. “Not much, though. There was no time.”
“It might slow him down,” said Herc, dropping onto his knees and rummaging in his duffel bag. “I’ve got something else here that will help as well.”
“Where’s Taupe?” Pan said, staring into the dark with an expression that Marlow instantly hated—like she was longing for him. He’d almost managed to forget about the French guy. He was probably abseiling down the elevator shaft, about to single-handedly wrestle Ostheim into submission before carrying Pan off in those big arms of his.
Herc sighed, shaking his head.
“Caught a stray bullet,” he said, tapping his temple. “Right here. Never even knew about it.”
Oh. Marlow swallowed the guilt back down his throat. Pan’s face was made of stone again, her jaw clenched so tightly it might shatter.
“He would have been happy to know he’d died fighting,” Herc said. “If it makes you feel better.”
Not really, Marlow thought. Not at all. He’d died fighting for the wrong side.
Herc went back to whatever he had in his bag, a series of clicks and beeps from it echoing around the hall.
“What is that?” Charlie asked. Herc glanced at him, then performed a perfect double take when he noticed Charlie wasn’t wearing anything.
“Don’t ask,” said Marlow.
“Fair enough,” said Herc. “This, my friends, is a Mark-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition.”
“A what?” said Marlow.
“A nuke,” Charlie replied. “Right?”
“A tactical nuclear weapon,” Herc confirmed. “Six kilotons of pure trouble for Ostheim.”
“It’ll take out the Engine?” Marlow said.
“It won’t even dent it,” Herc said, his knees popping as he groaned to his feet. “But it might bury that asshole for a while. Come on, we’ve got twenty minutes.”
He jogged back to the elevator, squeezing through the doors. Nobody followed him, the cloud of exhaustion that hung over them so heavy it was almost a physical thing. Marlow wasn’t sure he could move even if he wanted to. Herc looked out at them.
Hellfighters: The Devil's Engine Series, Book 2 Page 18
