But to Blake’s and Hank’s horror, the transformation continued, the dwarf shedding all human semblance. His inverted fingers dug into his brow, widening the jagged wound left by the torch, tearing open the hollow prosthetic of his head as though it were mere papier-mâché to be discarded along with his waxen ears and nose. The black fluid seeped from the gash torn in the pitted scalp that barely rose above the level of his furiously glaring eyes. He crouched forward, thick saliva dripping from the points of his yellow teeth, the curve of his hunched back splitting open along the knots of his spine. From the wet, sinewed cavity emerged two winglike arms, their muscles gleaming as they arched and tautened above him. His gut expanded, the scabrous flesh finally bursting to reveal a pair of spindly legs, unfolding as a spider might reach toward its prey, their claws raking across the stone edge before them.
What was left of the Lieutenant’s face was no longer capable of human words. A piercing screech sounded from the raw, lipless mouth, as the demon form leapt from the altar, its razored arms slashing toward Hank and the infant he held close to his chest.
Hank turned, sheltering Ren-Lei in his arms. The demon claws slashed across his back, tearing red welts over his shoulder blades. Blake sprung forward and grabbed one of the demon’s feet, pulling the creature away from Hank and hurling it over the floor of the temple. Howling, the demon crashed into the stone wall, then rebounded in a spinning arc, hands ripping open the front of Blake’s blood-encrusted overcoat and staggering him backward.
Still clutching Ren-Lei with one hand, Hank reached up and grabbed the sword hilt that the dwarf had dropped on top of the altar. At the same time, he brought his boot heel into the point where one of the demon’s spidery legs joined the swollen body, hard and sharp enough to yank it away from Blake and set it facing him. He rammed the butt of the hilt into one of its eyes, yellow pus spattering across his wrist.
Screaming in pain, the half-blind creature swept a scything claw toward Hank and the infant in his arms. But Hank had already let go of the sword and brought the magnesium breastplate down before them as a shield. A trail of sparks followed the claw’s point across the metal.
Blake recovered his balance, grabbing the edge of the altar and pulling himself up high enough to grab the battle-axe that hung beside the empty suit of armor. The weapon’s double blades burst into flames when he seized its handle, as though it knew it was about to draw blood.
The demon spotted the flames and vaulted upward, hands clawing at Blake to disarm him. The soldier dodged to one side at the base of the altar, bringing his free hand flat against the floor and using it as a pivot to spin himself behind the demon. He brought the battle-axe crashing down upon the deformed head. The blow was so swift that it didn’t stop inside the demon’s skull, but continued downward through his chest and beyond, slicing its body into two halves, the axe’s blade clanging into the stone beneath the bifurcated groin. Each half flopped apart in a spasm of pain and shock; the left side struck one of the braziers, the burning sulphur scattering across the floor.
Both halves of the demon stopped moving at last. The one intact eye dulled, the thick nerve at the center of the exposed cortex writhing like a pink worm, then shivering to quiescence. A thick, black smoke began billowing up from the demon’s remains.
“I guess that means the ugly bastard’s dead…” Blake’s matted dreadlocks hung across his face as he leaned forward to look at the baby in the other man’s arms. “She all right? Not hurt?”
“Didn’t even cry.” Hank smiled down at her, then waved a hand before his own face. “How long is this smoke stuff supposed to go on for?” The temple was filling up with black clouds from the demon’s corpse, obscuring the light from the braziers and torches. “She’s gonna suffocate if we don’t get her out of here.” He scanned across the dark tunnel openings that ringed the space. “Which way did we come in?”
A second passed before Blake answered. “That one—” He pointed. “I think.”
The black smoke followed them as they ran down the tunnel. Hank shielded Ren-Lei’s face from it with one of his hands. They halted when they reached a branching point in the maze, gasping for breath as they looked at the arched openings in front of them.
“Now which way?”
“Wait a minute…” Blake nodded toward the inky tendrils seeping past them. “The smoke’s being drawn that way.” He pointed to one of the openings. “It must be being pulled to the surface through that staircase we crashed down. That must be where the tunnel heads to. Come on—”
Hank hurried after the other man. They had only gone a few yards when he heard, rather than saw, Blake colliding with something in his path and falling to the ground.
Holding Ren-Lei against himself, he looked down at two figures sprawled at his feet—Blake and the teenage kid in the black leather jacket, who he had first spotted up in the abandoned town house. “This a friend of yours?”
“Yeah—” Blake got to his feet. “Kind of.”
“You okay to move?” He leaned down to peer into the kid’s face. “Because we gotta keep going.”
“I’m okay.” Nathaniel pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “The way out’s back there—”
The smoke had already engulfed them again. They ran, with Nathaniel guiding them through the maze’s twists and turns. At last, they emerged from the low-ceilinged tunnels, into the open space littered with the debris of the staircase.
Someone else was waiting for them there. Hank clutched Ren-Lei closer to his chest as he saw who it was.
The light from the torch on the wall behind him sent the Devil’s clubfooted shadow wavering toward the men and the baby. “How could you…” He shook his head, seething with incandescent anger. “How could you believe that you’d be able to walk out of here, without having to pay?”
Blake and Nathaniel stepped in front of Hank, as though they could shield the infant in his arms.
“You have done what not even God dared to do. You have killed the one I trusted more than any other in the universe.” The Devil’s hard gaze fastened upon them. “But I promise you, his destruction will not go unavenged.”
15.
“I gave you a direct command.” The Devil set his incendiary glare upon Hank. “Was that so hard to understand? I warned you not to come here, and you disobeyed.”
As Blake and Nathaniel looked at the figure towering before them, Hank clutched the infant closer to his chest. “It’s not that I didn’t understand you,” he said. “I just didn’t care.”
The Devil stepped forward, his misshapen foot treading heavy in the chamber’s ancient dust. “And how could you all think that I wouldn’t find out about this? The existence of all the angels who fell with me is tied so closely to my own that I feel every wound they receive.”
Hank brought his forearm across Ren-Lei’s face, as though to shield her from the Devil’s scrutiny. But he had already spotted the infant. He was still yards away, but he raised his hand toward her, regardless.
“The child will be the first to go. I’ll scoop out her brains myself, just to punish her for being born.”
Blake strode forward, placing himself midway between his companions and the Devil. “Before you do that, try taking on a man instead.”
The Devil saw the filthy coat, and stared at it in shock. “That mantle … It’s one of mine…” He raised his eyes to Blake’s grime-covered face. “And I know you, too … We’ve met before…”
“Yeah…” Blake gave a single nod. “We have.”
“But … how can you be here?” The Devil continued to study him, as though he were a piece in a larger, more difficult puzzle. “How can you still walk … and speak?” A note of unease sounded in the Devil’s voice. “Considering what I took from you, that should be impossible.”
“But it isn’t—” Nathaniel stepped forward, taking a place next to Blake. “He’s too strong to be swallowed by your darkness, Devil. Even though his soul is only half of what it should be, it’s still the bri
ghtest one I’ve ever seen.”
The Devil swung his hard gaze toward Nathaniel. A dark realization flickered into his eyes. “You … I’ve seen you, too, in the thoughts of the damned. You are the boy who walks with Death.”
“That’s me.”
“And you’re saying you have … seen this man’s soul? Still shining?”
“I have. And because of what I’ve seen, I’ll stand by him now until he gets back what you stole from him.”
The Devil gestured to the world above. “Does your master know you’re here, acting in this way? As far as I know, you’re not supposed to get involved with the living world.”
“Things change,” said Nathaniel, meeting the Devil’s glare. “I answer to myself now. And because of that, I won’t turn back.”
The Devil’s cold regard moved across the three men in front of him, studying each in turn. “If you could see yourselves. You’re like a freak show.” His voice was filled with derision. “A giant oaf, a filthy wraith, and a postpubescent goth who’s discovered ideals. I find it an obscenity that the three of you should join together in this way. On a quest to save a mere child…”
The Devil’s words faded to silence. As though slit into his face by an invisible razor, a smile slowly formed.
“Three of you.” He nodded. “Of course…” One realization sparked another. “I should’ve seen it already.”
To their amazement, the Devil suddenly burst out laughing. His sharp-angled face creased as he tilted his head back, tears leaking from the corners of his squeezed-shut eyes. He had to reach a hand out and balance himself against the nearest wall.
“And just to think, I’ve always believed that Heaven didn’t have a sense of humor!” Having doubled over, he now straightened up, catching his breath. “I’ve been waiting all this time for three great generals to arrive—at the head of an invincible army. That’s what the prophecy has been saying all these years, ever since the tree first appeared.” The Devil made a show of wiping his eyes as he shook his head. “But there is no army, other than those idiots up in the garden square. And as for Courage, Self-Sacrifice, and Resolve … It’s just you three!”
Hank held Ren-Lei higher in his arms, away from the smoke that had started to fill the chamber. “Look, mister. Are you going to step aside and let us leave, or do we have to move you?”
“Move me?” The Devil’s laughter faded again. “I’d kill a thousand of the likes of you before I ever let you pass. You’ve murdered one of my fallen angels. Part of the fabric of creation. You’re going to stay here, and pay for what you’ve done with your blood and bones.” He took another step toward them, watching as all three braced themselves for his attack. “Oh … But don’t delude yourselves into thinking that I’ll dirty my hands with you myself,” he said. “The Lieutenant you killed was not only a friend to me, but to the whole legion who fell with me. And they are screaming for revenge as well, scratching to get in at you through these very walls. Or haven’t you realized yet just how far below this city you’ve descended? And how close my Lieutenant’s home was to the threshold of my realm?”
The Devil raised both arms, spreading his hands wide above his head. He closed his eyes, and let his fingers curve clawlike, as if pulling some invisible substance out of the thickening air.
Underneath their feet, the stone floor rumbled. The noise seemed to come from the farthest limits of the dark tunnels surrounding the chamber. A shrill keening—faint at first, then louder and louder—cut through the smoke.
Between the Devil’s hands, a sphere of churning flame gathered. Sparks shot upward, igniting the torches that lined the chamber’s higher reaches. The combined glow reddened the smoke, transforming the space into an outpost of Hell. Nathaniel turned his gaze, appalled once more at the vision revealed, of the tiny interlocked skeletons, shadows flickering in the eye sockets of their broken skulls.
The subterranean groans grew deafening, traveling up into the men’s stomachs. Hank looked down at the small form he held, and saw Ren-Lei’s eyes flutter open. Her clear-eyed gaze locked upon his for only a moment, then she pressed herself tighter into the shelter of his arms.
Nathaniel leapt back, startled by the jagged fissure that opened before him. The gap widened, dust sifting into its depths as more cracks broke through the chamber’s floor. The infant skeletons cascaded from the walls, the bones splintering and snapping in a dry staccato rattle. One small skull rolled against the toe of Nathaniel’s boot, and he convulsively kicked it away.
The seismic cracks spread upward through the walls. Rocks tumbled down upon the bones as the vertical fissures spread wider than Hank’s massive shoulders. The light from the torches was eclipsed by that from the flames of Hell itself, appearing in the volcanic reaches beyond. Visible through the gaps in the chamber walls, mile-wide craters reached to the horizons of the infernal landscape. Each pit, ringed by razor-sharp boulders, was filled with writhing figures, still human in shape but with their flesh consumed by fire that burned but did not destroy. Sinners, locked in their eternal torment, screamed into each other’s pain-blinded faces, seeing nothing but their own damnation, hands of charred bone tearing at any flesh they could reach, no longer able to tell the difference between theirs and another’s. Tatters of skin flailed from the tangled, blackened limbs as they clawed toward their prison’s rim and were then pulled back by the ones below, over and over, none of them hoping to escape—for in this place, all hope had fled long ago—but all driven mad by the shrieking knowledge that their punishment would never cease, never relent, never be anything but this, world without end.
A black-clouded storm swept over the hellscape, its scorching wind driving the fire across the sinner’s naked bodies and into the chamber where the Devil confronted the three men. He stood without moving, the flames curling around his arms and shoulders. The burning light glinted in his eyes as he smiled.
In the distance behind, they could see a horde of demons rushing toward them, hooved feet striking the skulls of the damned, leathery black wings beating the ignited air. Their faces, alight with hideous glee, were shielded by helmets split by the sword blades of the angels who had once defeated them. Broken armor pieces clanked against their chitinous ridged chests as they swung the implements of an ancient armory above their heads, spiked balls on chains catching sparks against notch-bladed spears and scimitars.
“Look out!” Hank shouted the warning through the demons’ shrieking cries as the first of them swarmed through the flames surrounding the Devil. Cradling Ren-Lei tighter against his chest, he grabbed Nathaniel’s arm and pulled him back out of harm’s way.
The snarling creature at the head of the charge swung a hooked pikestaff at Blake’s head; he caught the weapon’s staff in both hands, straining to throw the demon back against the others coming after it.
Nathaniel shook off the giant hit man’s grasp. With the demon horde only a yard away, he braced himself with one leg angled behind him, the forward one bent low. He stretched both hands before himself, palms outward—
And closed his eyes.
The demons shrieked higher, seeing the first of their prey so close, so easy to grab and rip apart.
Then there was silence.
Hank looked over the baby’s head, exchanging glances with Blake. The demons stood frozen in place—as did the Devil, still with the thin, cruel smile on his sharp-angled face, where he had been watching from the opposite side of the stone chamber.
“Nathaniel…” The pikestaff remained angled in midswing as Blake slowly let go of its shaft and stepped back from it and the immobile demon who wielded it. Both he and Hank stepped to either side of him. “Are you okay?”
A moment passed before Nathaniel responded. He remained in the same outstretched pose, as though pushing against an invisible tide that threatened to engulf them. He nodded slowly, then spoke, eyes still closed: “Get out of here … Quick!”
Baffled, Hank looked from him to the stilled demons, then back again. “Did th
e kid do this?”
“Yeah,” said Blake. “But I don’t think he can keep it up for long.”
“Hurry!” Nathaniel spoke again, a line of sweat beginning to trickle down the corner of his brow. His lips were pressed bloodless. “Get the baby out of here … I’ll follow when I can.”
Leaving Nathaniel behind them, Hank and Blake scrambled up the sloping pile of rubble. At its crest, Blake halted and pointed up the shaft, still lined with the wreckage of the shattered staircase. “I’ll go ahead and try out every hold first,” he said. “To see if it’s secure.”
“And I’ll follow on with Ren-Lei.” Hank gazed upward at the climb ahead of them. “At least there are still a few torches left on the walls, to give us a bit of light.”
Holding Ren-Lei in the crook of one arm, Hank followed Blake up the shaft as quickly as he could. By the time he had followed Blake several yards upward, he gave in to the temptation to look back down. He could see the torch-lit chamber, with Nathaniel still poised at one side, hands stretched out in front of himself, holding back the flow of Time and the demons that would be carried on it like a tidal wave when the kid’s strength gave out.
Another couple of yards up, he found himself stuck. The next handhold was too far above him to reach while still holding Ren-Lei.
“Hey!” He shouted up to Blake. “Need some help here—”
The soldier looked back down and saw immediately what the problem was. With lightning-quick agility, he lowered himself toward Hank.
“Give her to me.” Blake reached down. “I’ll hold her until you get your next grip.”
“Okay. But be careful—” He drew Ren-Lei away from his chest and held her up toward Blake’s outstretched hand.
The infant’s eyes widened in fear as the overcoat’s blackened sleeve came close to her. She let out a terrified wail, as though the approach of the heavy cloth had scalded her with a searing flame.
Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel Page 15
