Demon Games [4]

by Steve Feasey

2

  The demon lord Molok looked down from his ornate obsidian throne, studying the latest addition to his collection. This one was not like the other humans who had been brought here to the Netherworld. They had been entertaining – for a while at least. Their human minds had seemed incapable of accepting the evidence of their eyes. They had screamed, a sound that was beautiful to Molok’s ears. Some had torn at their hair or eyes, or curled up into tight balls from which they refused to move. Some had assumed a trance-like state, staring with eyes that refused to see. They had all gone mad; some had taken a little longer than others, but none had been able to accept what they saw and smelt and heard and touched here. They were weak creatures, pathetic even, but the demon lord enjoyed watching their suffering.

  Some of Molok’s specimens had died – a disagreeable occurrence for a collector such as himself – but the others remained in the cages that the demon lord used to display them, and he would often visit them, watching them pace back and forth across the same little strip of ground, mumbling or sometimes shouting nonsensically.

  But this one was different. She had been captured from within the Netherworld, trying to escape the illusory environment that an Ashnon provided for a human while it occupied its body. The magic that the Ashnon employed to protect the humans in their charge was powerful, and those inside their sphere of protection were off-limits to the likes of Molok. But should any of them be foolish enough to leave the protective environs that had been set up for them – well, they were fair game.

  She stood unmoving before the raised dais, refusing to look up until, in a voice like the rumble of distant thunder, the demon commanded that she do so. The girl raised her head, showing her face to the nether-creature for the first time. The look that met the Hell-Kraken almost took the demon lord aback: the girl’s eyes blazed with a hatred and insolence that he was unaccustomed to being shown – even by his own kind. He met the look for a moment before laughing with delight – a deep and terrible sound that rebounded off the walls of the Great Hall.

  ‘What is your name?’ Molok asked, already knowing the answer.

  The girl simply stared back at him. He noticed how her jaws were clenched and how she tried to conceal the fear that shook her entire body. The guard standing behind her raised a hand as if to strike her. ‘Your new master asked you your name,’ it hissed.

  Molok raised a hand, halting the guard before it could touch the human girl.

  ‘What is your name, girl?’ he asked again.

  She tilted her chin up, settling herself. ‘Philippa Tipsbury.’

  Her voice was strong and wavered only a little as she fixed her eyes on his.

  The Hell-Kraken known as Molok rose, spreading the vast leathery black wings on his back. Black flames seemed to ignite all over his body and wings, licking at the air as they danced across the demon’s skin; the air shimmering in the heat. The creature, fully three metres tall, glared down at the insignificant little human below and pointed a taloned finger in her direction.

  ‘Are you not afraid of me, Philippa Tipsbury?’ The demon lord’s voice boomed and echoed around the stone walls.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘And yet you stand there in an open display of defiance.’

  Philippa looked up at the creature. The demon was huge: a great, hulking torso covered in thick, rhino-like black hide was topped with a terrifying head, out of which it stared at her from yellow eyes pierced in the centre by minuscule inky-black dots. Fat lips the colour of burned meat pulled back over teeth and gums of the same colour to reveal a bloated pink tongue.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Philippa said, blinking back the tears that threatened to fall as she inwardly began to crumble at the terror that she had tried to deny. ‘You would prefer me to scream? To tear at my face and hair? To fall on my knees at your feet and beg you for freedom? Because I would do all those things and more if I thought that they would help me. But they won’t, will they? None of them will make you release me, will they?’

  The demon considered this. He slowly folded his wings and sat back down, the flames flickering and then extinguishing as he did so. He looked at her again, running the tip of his tongue across his teeth. ‘No. I have no intention of letting you go, Philippa Tipsbury.’

  She was indeed a most excellent addition to his collection. But she was more than that: she was the bait with which to catch a much bigger fish.

  3

  Caliban stood in the centre of the crypt, staring up the stone steps to the now open door. He smiled, his lips peeling back over his fangs, as he considered how long he’d spent trying to find that door. Even for a creature as old as him – and he was centuries old – the time it had taken for him to discover this place was considerable.

  He heard them before he saw them, and then they began to pour into the place: a dense black river of insects flooding through the door, turning the cold grey steps into a living black thing that writhed and undulated in its inexorable charge towards him. Except the creatures’ final destination was not Caliban but the thing that lay on the stone dais behind him. The vampire flicked his eyes towards the only other nether-creature in the vault – a Pit-Shedim called Thrin; his eyes were closed, lips moving silently as he concentrated on the extremely difficult spell he was casting. Judging from the walls behind the demon, which at that moment were alive with insects of every description emerging from cracks and fissures, the spell was working spectacularly well.

  A great stone sarcophagus dominated the centre of the vault. When the sea of tiny creatures reached the crypt floor, it parted into two channels round Caliban’s feet before reforming and continuing its journey towards the dais. The vampire watched as the bugs and beetles crawled up the filthy stonework, drawn towards the withered and ancient heart lying inside the coffin, the lid of which had been removed and rested against one wall. The writhing, boiling inky mass poured into the coffin. And still they came. More and more of the creatures entered the vault, scuttling and swarming over each other, filling the air with a high-pitched staccato noise as their hard, chitinous bodies collided with each other. No airborne insects came, and the vampire momentarily wondered why this should be, but one glance at the living carpet that now covered almost every surface of the underground chamber suggested that every kind of land-based hard-bodied invertebrate had been drawn forth from the Netherworld by the Pit-Shedim’s sorcery.

  Caliban walked towards the sarcophagus, ignoring the crunch of tiny bodies beneath his feet, and peered inside. The space which had once housed nothing more than a withered and desiccated heart was now alive. Insects attached themselves to the ancient organ, while others grasped the bodies of those before them, the whole thing expanding and accreting at a terrific rate. Caliban watched the frenzied but somehow coordinated activity and saw that the thing was already beginning to take on the shape of a torso. The heart could no longer be seen, but Caliban knew that it remained at the centre of the writhing mass of insects. The shape of the shoulders was forming, and soon Caliban would see the beginnings of arms and legs, growing rapidly as the tiny creatures drew together, linked in a way that he could not understand.

  ‘How much longer?’ the vampire asked the pale-skinned Pit-Shedim standing beside him.

  The demon shrugged his shoulders in response; his eyes, open now, were glued to the area of floor in front of him, and the vampire could see that he was consumed with the effort required to perform the magic.

  Caliban glanced over at the steps and noted that the number of insects descending them was beginning to decrease, as if they somehow sensed that the thing in the sarcophagus was approaching completion and that they would not be needed. The rate of growth of the thing inside the stone coffin had slowed down too. Gone was the frenetic, frenzied charge to be a part of the thing forming on the cold stone surface; instead a more careful construction process was beginning as the outer elements of the body began to take shape. Nowhere was this more evident than at the head, where the larger creatures
acted as a bridge for the smaller insects that amassed on the upturned face to form the facial features.

  Quite suddenly, as if some silent command had been issued, the influx stopped. Those creatures that were already inside the crypt continued their march towards their comrades, but no more were called. Caliban felt an emotion that he had not experienced in some time begin to well up inside him and he turned to look down into the coffin excitedly.

  The humanoid form was complete. It was obvious from the shape of the body that the figure was that of a woman, but this was like no woman that any creature had laid eyes on before. She lay on her back, her arms crossed over her breasts, and the vampire’s gaze wandered over the writhing mass of black insects which were in constant motion so that her skin rippled and shifted beneath his scrutiny.

  Caliban reached forward, his hands hovering in the air over the body.

  ‘It is done?’ he asked.

  The Pit-Shedim did not move or answer his master’s question. The magic he had performed had drained him of all energy, and his body seemed limp. The huge horns that grew downwards from either side of his head seemed to weigh the whole thing down so that it hung forward, the nether-creature seeming to lack the strength even to lift his face to look the vampire in the eye. ‘It is done,’ he said eventually. ‘I have returned her to you, as promised.’

  The vampire looked at the figure inside the tomb again before turning to the demon. ‘You have done excellently, Thrin. You have served your master well.’ He turned his back on the demon, his eyes blazing as he took in the contents of the coffin.

  ‘Step closer,’ the vampire ordered, without turning. ‘There is one more thing that I want from you.’

  The nether-creature obeyed, shuffling forward until he stood beside his master at the edge of the dais.

  He never saw the blades that now served as fingers on the vampire’s false hand until it was too late. The razor-sharp edges raked across the demon’s throat, and a fountain of gore erupted from the wound. Blood spewed into the air, covering the vampire, who moved quickly, stepping back and grabbing the demon, manhandling the body so that the inky liquid poured down on to the prostrate form inside the sarcophagus.

  As the hot black gore spattered on to the body, a sound like a long breath being slowly exhaled filled the vault.

  Throwing the demon’s body to one side, Caliban leaned over the figure of the woman, his mouth close to her ear.

  ‘Patience, my pretty one,’ he said. ‘I will bring you more blood, lots of blood, and soon you will be returned to where you belong.’

  He stepped back, taking in the figure on the dais one last time. Images he’d seen of the sorceress suggested that she had been beautiful to behold. She had not lived in the Netherworld for such a long time, and he knew that her return must be kept secret for a while yet. She needed more blood to reanimate fully, but that was not a problem for Caliban; the vampire was never short of that particular commodity. He would revive her: Helde the Queen of the Dead, and when he had, he would unleash her dreadful powers once again.

  The vampire smiled to himself. Stepping over the dead body of the demon, he left the vault, carefully closing the door behind him.

  4

  ‘OK, tell me again why we can’t just locate a portal and go through it to the Netherworld.’

  ‘Because all the normal routes – the permanent portals – are under constant surveillance. Caliban’s goons maintain a presence near them,’ Dreck said with a small sigh. ‘We can’t use any of those, so we need another method of entry. We need a portal of our own so that we can slip in undetected.’

  ‘And why is that so difficult? I thought Lucien had people who could do that.’

  ‘Well, that requires some pretty powerful magic, and the person who could have carried out such a feat – Alexa – has upped and left already. The only other person who could have opened up a portal large enough and for sufficient time to get you and me through together was Charles Henstall. But we don’t have him any more.’

  Trey felt a sinking sensation, as if he’d suddenly been hollowed out inside. Charles had been a talented young sorcerer who had died saving Trey’s life. Thoughts of Charles quickly turned to thoughts of Alexa, and a sickening feeling of fear coursed through Trey as he considered the danger that she had now placed herself in, trying to rescue her own friend.

  ‘The problem we have is you,’ Dreck continued, nodding his head in Trey’s direction. ‘I can get to the Netherworld quite easily. Like many demons, and some djinn, I have the ability to open a portal for a fraction of a second – long enough for me to slip through. But it’s not possible for anyone – or anything – to come through with me.’

  ‘Can’t you go through, open it up again from the other side, and I’ll slip through then?’

  Dreck looked at him as if he was some kind of idiot. ‘It doesn’t work like that. My ability to get back to the Netherworld is like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s a safety system – an escape hatch, if you like. The portal is unique to the creature that created it. If you tried to go through, you’d arrive at the other side minced into tiny pieces.’

  ‘Oh, this is just great. Are you seriously telling me that we have no way of getting me into the Netherworld? That with all the magic, demons and technology housed in this building there isn’t someone or something that can get us across easily?’ The teenager stood up, scraping the chair legs on the tiled floor.

  Tom had come back into the room behind him. He crossed over to Trey and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, gently motioning for him to sit down again. As Trey lowered himself back into the seat, he caught a look that passed between Tom and Dreck.

  ‘As Dreck has explained, we’re in a bit of a bind,’ Tom said. ‘We want to get you both into the Netherworld as quickly as possible, but we’re behind the eight-ball when it comes to doing so without being discovered. Dreck has suggested using a hell-hole.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Some demons set up remote snatch points: portals from the Netherworld into the human realm from which they can grab people and drag them away. The amount of magic involved in operating one of these holes is enormous, so only the most powerful and influential demons can do it. Our friend Molok happens to be one of those. Very occasionally he’ll set up a hell-hole. When someone unwittingly wanders in the portal is automatically triggered and the demons have a few seconds to grab their victim and drag him through. Humans are highly prized over there, so the risk involved is worth it to some nether-creatures.’

  ‘And how would a hell-hole help us?’

  ‘We know the location of one. Usually when we discover one of these traps, Lucien is quick to see that it’s swiftly put out of action. But on this occasion we—’

  ‘Could use it to get me through.’ Trey finished the Irishman’s sentence for him.

  Tom winked at his young charge. ‘The rain that destroys the turn makes the cabbage grow, eh?’

  ‘I have no idea what that means, Tom,’ Trey said, feeling his mood lift for the first time in the two days since Alexa had disappeared, ‘but I’m guessing it’s something along the lines of, “Let’s go and kick some demon arse.”’

  ‘Something like that, lad. Something like that.’

  ‘There are drawbacks to the plan,’ Dreck said in a small voice.

  Trey shot the demon a sour look. ‘What drawbacks?’

  ‘You’ll have to go over in your human form. If the portal opens and they see a seven-foot werewolf standing there, they’re going to know something is up.’

  Trey considered this. The idea of being snatched by a group of demons while unable to defend himself was not one he relished. But he pushed the thought away, reasoning that he would deal with it as and when it happened. It sounded like the only way to get to the Netherworld and to Alexa.

  ‘When can we go?’ he said.

  ‘Today,’ Tom answered.

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  5

  Lucien Charron kept the
folds of his hood pulled down low over his features, knowing that it would not do to be recognized here. Few gave the cloaked figure of the vampire a second glance as he walked among them.

  Despite the hour, the maze of tight alleyways that made up the market was still busy with nether-creatures of every size, shape and description. They crowded in on each other around a multitude of vendors selling all manner of items. There were markets like this all over the Netherworld, trading in all manner of strange goods from cheap trinkets and novelties to darker, more macabre items: human body parts, fluids, bones and hair – all of which were used by the realm’s denizens to perform acts of dark magic. Most were counterfeit – the real thing was rarely found in the markets – but that did not deter one or two traders who could be heard crying out to the passers-by, expounding the merits and authenticity of their goods. One merchant – a huge, fat Gogwad, selling what it claimed were genuine shrunken human heads – had gathered quite a crowd around its pitch, and Lucien smiled to himself at the sight of the two Shade-imps darting in and out among the onlookers, relieving them of any purses that they were foolish enough to have on display.

  There was a shout from up ahead and Lucien turned to see an ornate sedan chair being borne through the crowd. The windowed litter was constructed of what appeared to be hundreds of bones – a commonly used decoration in the Netherworld – but these had been coated in a deep red, glossy lacquer, giving the impression that they were still wet with blood. The red livery marked the vehicle as one of Orfus’s, although the demon himself would not be inside – this carriage would be occupied by one of his underlings. Two long black poles stretched out fore and aft, and these were carried on the shoulders of two Shadow Demons. Walking ahead of the entire ensemble was a great, lumbering Maug, growling and cursing at the crowd to make way, and flicking a barbed whip at anyone or anything not quick enough to do so.

  Lucien stepped beneath a stone archway, content to wait out the passing of the litter in the shadows that it afforded. The litter’s occupant was hidden from view, ensconced behind heavy black curtains, but the vampire guessed that it held a demon of some wealth and power; no one else travelled in these ludicrous and pretentious vehicles. At some unheard signal, the Shadow Demons halted, bending at the knees and gently lowering the litter to the ground. There was a movement at the curtain nearest to the shrunken-head seller’s stall, and a hand emerged from the darkness. The appendage was skeletal, the bones clearly visible beneath paper-thin grey skin. Gnarled and horribly misshapen fingers were topped by long black talons whose dagger-like tips hung down beneath the palm, and one of these slowly extended, pointing at a particular shrunken head on the front of the stall.