Pan let go of the sheet, hearing the crunch of her reflection’s teeth, a wet swallow. Then laughter, a childish giggle.
… not, never was one for …
“Charlie,” said Pan. “Did Mammon say anything else about his family? Brothers, sisters. Were there four of them?”
“Five,” he said. “But one was Ostheim.”
Pan walked behind the spider mirror and looked at the others. The smallest sat to the side, maybe four feet tall beneath its sheet. They got bigger from left to right, the largest standing a couple inches taller than her. She went to that one first, peeking beneath the cover.
Another Pan stared back, then burst into flames—a conflagration so powerful that it scorched the glass. Pan could feel the heat of it against her face. She staggered back, bumping into the tall mirror behind her hard enough to make it rock. In the glass she watched herself blacken and twist, her skin popping as the fat beneath exploded, her eyeballs hissing as the moisture in them boiled.
No, she didn’t quite say, dropping the sheet and putting her hands to her ears until the sound of sizzling flesh ebbed away.
She reached for the next mirror, her fingers shaking so much she almost couldn’t grab the covering. She didn’t want to look, but she did. Her face here was bloated beyond all recognition, her eyes so cloudy they could have belonged to a fish, her skin peeling off in strips. There was a mark around her throat that she couldn’t figure out—not until she saw the figures swinging from the ceiling behind her reflection, dozens of them, hanging there like flies on a sticky strip.
They’re not really there, she thought, but she looked back anyway. No hanged men behind her, just Charlie and Marlow creeping across the room. Charlie squinted into the glass and put a hand to his mouth.
“Dude…” was all he said.
… show you, no matter …
“You hear that?” she asked them when the whisper had faded. They both nodded.
“Mammon told me about his brother,” said Charlie. “Ostheim strung him up, hung him.”
“And one of them burned, right?” said Pan. Charlie nodded, turning three shades paler.
“Alive,” he said.
Pan let the sheet drop over her own dead face, turning to the second-smallest mirror.
“Was Meridiana older or younger than Mammon?” she asked.
“No idea,” said Charlie.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and lifted the sheet in front of her. The movement provoked a reaction from the back of the room, that same growl as before—something stalking them, something warning them.
Her face. Or at least part of it, a chunk ripped away. She could see her brain, flecked with chips of shattered skull, and when she put her hand there a bolt of pain lanced through her. Grunting, she tried to focus on the churning darkness behind her reflection. Something was moving, something fast, something snakelike.
It almost looked like …
A black, sinewy limb darted toward the glass, whipcracking against her reflection. Her head split near enough in two, blood and brain exploding. She let go of the sheet, falling back into Marlow. He held her, and she held him until she could swallow her heart back down into her chest.
… nearly there, not long …
“That’s what happened to Mammon,” said Marlow when she had let go. “Looked like Ostheim behind him.”
“So she had three brothers,” Pan said. “Not including Ostheim, that is. One burned, one hanged, one pulled to pieces.”
“And that leaves her,” said Marlow.
The last mirror. Pan smeared her sweaty palms on her pants, wondering what horror she would find here. When she lifted the sheet, though, there was nobody there—not her, or Charlie, or Marlow, just the room, lying empty.
Almost empty.
One mirror stood alone in the reflection, in the opposite corner. It wasn’t particularly big, or particularly small, concealed with a dust sheet. Pan looked over her shoulder, searching the packed room until she saw the mirror that was inside the mirror.
“Hey, Herc,” she said. “Go take the sheet off that one over there.”
Herc grumbled his way across the room, saying, “This one?” When she nodded, he grabbed the sheet and pulled it away, squinting. He ran a hand over his stubble.
“Nothing here, except a handsome guy who needs a shave,” he said.
Pan turned to the little mirror again. The dustcover in the reflection had gone, too, revealing the same skeletal frame and dark-dappled glass.
“Think that’s the one?” Marlow asked.
… is it? Is it the one?
The whispers echoed around the room, like they were mocking her. She was about to reply when she saw something moving inside the reflected mirror—just a tiny flicker to start with, growing bigger and faster.
“More importantly,” Marlow said, “how do we get inside it?”
The thing inside the mirror that was inside the mirror barreled forward, the whole room starting to shake with the force of it. Pan spun around, looking at the actual mirror, and at Herc standing next to it. Dust rained from the ceiling onto him and he waved it away, coughing.
“What?” he said when he saw her expression.
“Get away!” she screamed.
Too late.
The mirror next to Herc exploded outward, something bursting through in a hail of glass. Herc didn’t even have time to scream before a pair of jaws clamped around his stomach. In a flash of marbled flesh and muscle and bone-yellow teeth, he was hauled inside the broken glass.
He was gone.
LAST STAND
“Herc!”
Marlow ran, colliding with Pan. Somehow he managed to keep his feet, both of them skidding to a halt next to the shattered mirror.
There was no glass left in that twisted frame, but the view was identical—the same room, the same shrouded mirrors. Herc was nowhere to be seen, but Marlow could hear the old guy screaming, the crunch of something toppling, the muffled growl of a demon.
“Herc!” Pan screamed. She pressed her head through the gap and Marlow grabbed her shoulder. She turned, shoving him away. “Don’t you dare,” she said.
The frame was shaking, something pushing its way out of the inner edge. The face mounted on the top opened its mouth, its jaw twisting in agony, those dead eyes rolling in their puckered sockets. Glass was growing inward, the sound of it setting Marlow’s teeth on edge.
It was repairing itself.
“We have to move now,” Pan said, and she didn’t wait for a reply before throwing herself through the shrinking gap.
Here we go again, Marlow said. He took a hit on the inhaler, coughing the dust and fear from his lungs. Then he stepped after her.
It was like walking into a freezer, so cold it burned. He chased a cloud of his breath into the room beyond, wrapping his hands around his torso. Pan was to the left, running toward a thrashing pile of limbs that could only be Herc and the demon. The creature had Herc in its jaws still, shaking him like a dog with a rabbit. The old guy’s Desert Eagle was halfway across the room.
Marlow stopped, frozen by fear. What the hell was he supposed to do against a demon?
Demons.
There were howls coming from outside the room, like a pack of wolves was out there. Behind him, the mirror was sealing up fast. Charlie threw himself in, then the French girl, Claire, stumbled through, then Truck was there, trying to squeeze his bulk through the jagged edge. He was too big, the glass tearing through his clothes, blood running thick.
“No!” he yelled. The glass looked like it was growing through him. If he didn’t move one way or the other he was going to be cut clean in half.
“We’ll open it again,” Marlow said. “Get back, we’ll find another way through.”
Truck was still pushing and Marlow ran at him, shouldering him out of the gap. Truck staggered back like a wounded bear, clutching the wounds in his flank.
“We’ll find another way,” said Marlow.
“I
could have gotten through,” Truck said, pounding on the glass, on the frame. “Dammit, Marlow.”
Jaime was there, too, pulling something from her pocket. It glinted in the light when she threw it through the basketball-sized gap and it clattered on the floor.
A dagger, the one she’d conjured demons with.
She opened her mouth, yelling something, but the last of the glass had grown over the open wound. It sealed like an airlock door, the pressure making Marlow’s ears hurt. Jaime’s words were completely silent, Truck’s fists not making the slightest sound as he pounded on the glass. Both of them were slowing down, their movements creeping almost to a halt as if Marlow were watching a slow-motion replay.
No time to think about it. He turned, seeing Herc on the floor, the demon still tearing into him. Pan was throwing punches at it, Charlie running for the gun. Marlow scooped up the dagger and ran across the room. He studied it as he went, the iron blade etched with symbols. It was heavier than it had any right to be. There was no doubt it was something from deep inside the Engine; it gave off that same bone-numbing hum.
“Get off!” Herc roared, punching the demon in the side of its head. It didn’t even seem to feel it, those jaws snapping shut around his torso again.
Gunshots, Charlie holding the Desert Eagle and popping off rounds. Two missed, thudding into the walls. The third glanced off the demon’s shoulder.
The beast reared up, roaring, and Charlie shot it again. The round punched into its chest, knocking it back.
Pan had her hands under Herc’s armpits, hauling him across the floor. The old guy was clutching his ribs, his face bloodless and etched with pain. The demon shrieked again. Every inch of it glistened like it had no skin, only thick cords of muscle. Its eyeless face sniffed at the air, that raw red throat ready to swallow them all whole.
Charlie fired again, a bullet ripping off a chunk of the demon’s cheek. The demon charged at him like a tiger, jaws churning at the air. With a crunch of its powerful legs it was airborne, Charlie swearing as he dived to the side. The demon missed him, its claws gouging canyons in the wooden floor as it turned. It charged again, Charlie rolling in a panic, too slow to get up.
Marlow put his head down and ran, the blade glinting in his fist. The demon sensed him coming, blasting out a cry that stank of charcoal. Then it was on the move, bouldering toward him.
What the hell are you doing?
He skidded to a halt, tried to turn around. The demon thumped into him like a car, knocking him across the room. He rolled onto his back. Everything hurt.
“Help,” he croaked, but the only thing to answer was the demon as it pounced. It was like looking into a cement mixer lined with metal shards, that mouth big enough to swallow him whole.
Marlow felt metal in his fist, knew he still held the knife. He thrust it forward, holding it upright. The demon was midleap and it seemed to know the blade was there, its body twisting to one side, another cry halfway up its throat.
But even the spawn of hell had to obey gravity. It thumped down on top of Marlow, the blade sinking into the soft, gristly flesh of its stomach. There was a sound like a wing being pulled off a roasted chicken, then the creature exploded like a bomb in a butcher’s shop The force of it slammed Marlow’s head against the floor and he sank into something black and cold.
“Hey, Marlow.”
It could have been a million years or five seconds later that the words dragged him up. He snatched in a crackling breath, barely any oxygen there. Pan was crouched over him, drenched in blood. It dripped from her onto him, as cold as lake water. The room was decorated with demon guts. Charlie was doubled over and spitting chunks from his mouth.
“Little warning next time, maybe?” Pan said, shaking a chunk of something wet and black from her hair.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “No worries. Next time I’ll send an e-mail, make sure everyone has time to grab an umbrella.”
He tried to get up, falling onto his backside. Then Charlie was there, grabbing his wrist and pulling him to his feet. The whole world seemed to be moving and it took him a moment to understand he wasn’t imagining it. There was a pulse of sound running through the space, everything shaking for a few seconds then falling quiet, shaking then quiet, over and over. It was a sound he’d heard before.
The sound of the Engine.
“Everyone alive?” said Herc, staggering up. He winced, clutching his side.
“Just about,” said Pan. “You?”
“Body armor took the worst of it,” he said. “Couple ribs broken maybe, but hell, I got plenty more where they came from.”
“What is this place?” said Charlie, walking to the mirror they’d entered through. Truck and Jaime were still there, but now they were frozen solid—as still as a photograph. He tapped on the glass and the sound boomed like a bass drum.
Before anyone could answer, something thumped into the wall on the other side of the room. Marlow heard the fluttering of leathery wings, the snap of teeth. Something else was growling, the sound so low that Marlow couldn’t pinpoint it. He gripped the knife in a sweaty fist.
“We should go,” said Herc, limping across the room toward the passageway that sat there—identical to the one on the other side of the mirror.
Whatever was outside was busy tearing its way through to get to them. Another demon was screaming above, plaster dust raining down as it tried to claw in through the ceiling. Herc was almost at the passageway when a shape appeared in it, a hulking mass of twisted flesh that was even bigger than the one they’d just killed. Its head scraped against the top of the door as it lumbered through, its eyeless face taking them all in.
Marlow retreated to Pan’s side, Charlie joining them. Claire was pounding on the mirror with her tiny fists, trying to smash her way back to the real world. It might as well have been armored Plexiglas.
“Well,” said Charlie, the pistol rattling in his hands. “It was nice knowing you all. Apart from you, Herc. You can be a bit of a dick.”
“Please,” Pan said. The demon stalked into the room on six legs that might once have been human arms, big, hairy hands flexing at the ends of them. Its face was a nightmare of moving parts, jagged rows of teeth leading toward the black hole of its throat.
“Somehow I don’t think please is going to cut it,” said Marlow.
“Please, Meridiana,” Pan said, louder now. The wall coughed splinters as another demonic face pressed through. “We need you. We need help.”
Nothing, just the throbbing snarls of the demons. The big one in the passageway hissed at the one in the wall, feigning an attack like a hyena squabbling for food. A chunk of timber crashed from the ceiling as the third tunneled its way down.
The knife in Marlow’s hand felt like a cocktail stick. Herc took the gun from Charlie and checked the mag.
“Please,” Pan said again. “We knew Mammon. We knew your brother. We’re here to fight Ostheim, but we can’t do it by ourselves. We can’t.”
The big demon started to run, the floor trembling with the force of it. If Meridiana was anywhere here then she didn’t care about them. And why would she? She was safe here, she was hidden. And she’d lost everyone now.
“We know how to save him!” The words were out of Marlow’s mouth before he even knew it, before he even understood them. “We know how to bring Mammon back. We can bring him back to you.”
The room shuddered, a subsonic noise that made Marlow’s bones shake. The demon stopped in its tracks, looking back like a dog that has heard a whistle. It snarled, then turned, bounding out of the room. The one in the wall disappeared just as fast, a sickly light pouring in through the hole it had made. The noise from the ceiling stopped, hooves drumming across the roof like thunder before fading.
Pan threw a look at Marlow, one part nice move to three parts what the hell do we do now? She knew better than to say it out loud, though. Instead, she ran across the room to the passageway.
Marlow followed, gagging on the rotting-flesh stenc
h the demons had left behind. They walked into the front room of the shop—no mirrors in this version, just the same door, wide open.
Marlow hesitated. He felt like he was on a carnival ride, one of the haunted house ones where you ride a cart through dark rooms, where people jump out at you and animatronics howl with recorded laughter. There was always some fresh horror around the corner, but you could never turn back, you could never retrace your footsteps. You could only let yourself be ratcheted forward and hope that the next scare, whatever it was, didn’t make you crap your shorts.
Or, in this case, gut you, eat you, then crap you out into its shorts.
Nobody wanted to walk through the door, and in the end it was Claire who bit the bullet.
“I just want it to be over,” she said, sniffing as she went, still rubbing her stomach like she was about to be sick. Marlow wanted to be a gentleman, wanted to stop her so that he could check it was safe, but the mechanisms inside him had jammed. They started moving again only when she had turned around and looked back through the door.
“There is nothing here,” she said, scratching her wrist. “No monsters.”
Herc limped after her, then Pan. Marlow let Charlie go in front of him then stepped through. There was no Venetian street here, no cobbled road and chocolate-box houses. They were in a vaulted brick cellar, the walls slick with algae, puddles of water pooling around the fat columns that held up the ceiling. Candles were mounted on the walls, fluttering in a nonexistent wind. The shop they’d come out of sat alone in the huge space, slumped into itself like the last dude at a party. There were archways in all four walls, each leading into darkness.
“Eenie, meenie?” said Charlie.
Something growled from the arch behind them, a demon padding into sight. It put its head down, ready to charge, but another deep, almost imperceptible blast of sound brought it to heel. It thrashed in protest, snarling at them. Another demon appeared from the archway to the right—smaller, but with that same nightmare face. It staggered on three legs, its fourth just a ragged stump protruding from its shoulder.
Hellfighters: The Devil's Engine Series, Book 2 Page 22
