Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel

by Gareth Jefferson Jones K. W. Jeter

  Her cry made Hank move even faster. Within seconds, he had climbed farther up the shaft. He reached out one of his massive hands. “Quick—”

  As soon as she was back in the giant’s grasp, Ren-Lei quieted herself. She cooed up toward Hank’s face as she snuggled against his chest.

  “She definitely likes you,” said Blake as he looked down at the mismatched pair below him.

  “Just climb, okay…”

  The bottom of the shaft was a long way down, no more than a smokily glowing dot from this height. With his free hand, Hank dug his nails into the narrow ledge that was all that kept him from falling.

  They kept going. Time might have been frozen down below, but Hank could still feel it in the ache of his muscles and the burning of his fingertips, scraped raw by the crevices into which he forced them. Blood trickled down his wrists. Beating the city’s armies of thugs to death had been easy work compared to this.

  “Okay—” Blake’s voice floated back down in the darkness. “I can see it. We’re almost there—”

  Enough dim torchlight filtered up through the staircase shaft for Hank to just about see the ragged hem of Blake’s overcoat. Dust drifted into his face as the other man got an elbow onto the floor of the abandoned town house. Hank stopped in place and watched, head tilted back, as Blake angled his chest over the edge, then scrabbled himself free of the shaft. Lying flat, Blake reached back down.

  “Give me your hand—”

  Rearing back onto his knees, Blake dragged Hank halfway up into the town house’s empty space. Hank got a hand on the floor’s edge and with one muscle-straining effort, flopped himself on his back beside the other man, his own legs dangling across the shaft opening. He sat up, arm crossed over his chest, cradling Ren-Lei’s small weight.

  Less than a minute later, the two men burst from the town house’s front door. From its sagging porch, they could see the black silhouette of the Devil’s office tower reaching up into the storm clouds.

  “Look—” Blake pointed to a crooked finger of lightning that had been caught streaking down from the sky. “The kid still has Time frozen. Even up here.”

  They hurried toward the garden square at the tower’s base. Ren-Lei clapped her small hands together, enjoying the bouncing motion of Hank’s lumbering stride.

  The crowd surrounding the peach tree was stilled and silent, just as the demonic legions had been, down below the earth’s surface. But not for long. Hank pointed to a bee that was hovering near one of the tree’s last blossoms. The slow-motion buzz of the insect’s wings could be seen. “Damn! Looks like Nathaniel’s giving out—”

  Blake cocked his head, listening. Below the silence in which the garden was caught, a barely audible vibration could be sensed, moving from the infrasonic to the limit of human hearing. The crowd’s mingled breaths and voices signaled Time’s coursing approach.

  16.

  He opened his eyes. That was a mistake.

  Past the frozen horde of demons, Nathaniel could see the Devil, cruel smile immobile on that harshly formed visage. Keep it going, he told himself. You can do it. Inside the bubble of stilled Time into which he had cast the stone chamber, there was no way of telling how many minutes or hours had passed in the world beyond. Maybe Blake and Hank had managed by now to carry the infant to safety, or they might have managed to struggle only a little way up the shaft leading to the surface. If they were still there, and he wasn’t able to keep his spell going, the furious, pursuing demons would stir to life again, then swarm up the shaft and annihilate the three human beings, like molten rock surging from the center of the earth.

  All Nathaniel could do was hold the spell for as long as he could. Palms thrust out, he gritted his teeth, summoning every resource he possessed. He had already pushed beyond his previous limits, keeping Time frozen for longer than he ever had before. Or so it seemed—all those other times, he had been in the city’s night air, sour-smelling as garbage strewn in back alleys, but still freely available to draw down into his lungs. I’m on the Devil’s turf now, thought Nathaniel. Things might work differently down here, as though Time and gravity and existence itself were weakened and rendered threadbare.

  That worry was what had caused him to open his eyes, just to keep from being swallowed up by the darkness inside himself. He could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead, the chamber’s heat evaporating it to pure salt before it could reach the corners of his eyes. Just before him, he saw his upraised fingers trembling, the tension from his locked arms spreading through his hands. Farther away, where the walls had opened with a cascade of tiny skeletons, stood his enemy.

  The Devil’s eyes did not meet his. Instead, he’d had his sulphurous gaze narrowed upon the infant in Hank’s arms, as Nathaniel had summoned up the spell to stop Time. The Devil, frozen in place, was still looking a few degrees to the side of him, long after the two men had escaped with Ren-Lei.

  Nathaniel’s pulse inched forward a beat as he watched the pupils at the center of the Devil’s eyes. The small dark spaces suddenly contracted almost to pin-points, as though the mind behind them had finally perceived the other figures’ disappearance.

  Then the Devil’s gaze shifted, agonizingly slow, the way a marksman might carefully adjust the angle of his weapon, bringing a helpless target into the crosshairs of his scope. Until he was finally looking straight into Nathaniel’s eyes …

  An invisible spark passed between the two of them.

  He knows, realized Nathaniel. He knows what I’ve done.

  A deep basso rumble traveled through the ground, as though the world’s tectonic plates were shifting. In the same stilled moment, he saw the Devil’s shoulders swell and rise, straining against the burden that weighed him in place.

  Like a fragile crystal sphere, the spell began to crack at its edges. At the periphery of his vision, he could see dust sift from the chamber’s arched ceiling, and the smoke curl and writhe upon itself. The Devil’s gaze tautened to slits, dagger points aimed into the center of his skull. Nathaniel squeezed his hands into trembling fists, desperately holding onto the spell’s unraveling cords.

  They snapped, and were gone from his grasp. All around him, Time roared back into full motion. The mounting howls of the demons pummeled his hearing, the sudden shock wave dizzying him with the blood bursting at his inner ear, the chamber tilting as he lost his balance. He stumbled backward, as though struck by an invisible tidal wave. He had only a fragmented glimpse of the Devil’s eyes widening in delighted triumph as the spell’s broken shackles were shrugged off.

  His spine struck the floor hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. Gasping for air, he felt himself borne upward, the chamber’s ceiling hurtling toward him. He turned his face to the side and saw that the Devil’s legions had grabbed hold of his arms and legs, lifting their prize above their heads, the blades of their archaic weapons clashing sparks over the crests and dents of their helmets. Beyond them, he could just discern the Devil commanding his horned army with an upraised hand, bidding them onward in their maddened rush.

  Suddenly, he felt himself torn free of the demons’ clawed grasp, as the Devil flung one arm even higher above his head. An unseen force sent Nathaniel hurtling through the chamber’s smoke-darkened air.

  A searing blast of heat rolled over him from behind. He managed to twist himself onto one side and saw one of the wall’s openings rushing toward him.

  But nothing could halt his helpless trajectory. The flames roiled upward from the craters beyond as he was pitched into Hell.

  * * *

  “You hear that?”

  Blake grabbed Hank’s arm, halting him just yards away from the garden square. He brought both their gazes back toward the abandoned town house from which they had fled, carrying Ren-Lei with them.

  “What is it?” Hank peered toward the building’s dark silhouette. From somewhere below it, a raucous chorus of mingled screams and cries could be heard. “What’s going on—”

  “Time’s st
arted up again.” The soldier’s dirt-stained face turned even grimmer. “They’re coming for us…”

  Even as he spoke, the town house trembled on its foundations, as though struck by seismic tremors from deep in the earth. Slates snapped and slid from the eaves, exposing the attic’s sagging timbers. The demonic war cries swelled loud enough to peel the wooden planks away from the boarded-up windows, the dust-clouded glass shivering in the frames, then bursting into shards glittering through the night’s shadows.

  The town house’s walls bowed outward, as though a slow-motion bomb had been ignited inside. The chimneys crumbled, raining down fragments of brick and mortar. As though it were a toy box’s lid, the roof separated from the walls, shoved upward by a billow of smoke laced with churning fire.

  Hank pressed Ren-Lei tighter to his chest, covering the other side of her head with his broad hand, keeping the bloodcurdling shrieks from her tiny ears.

  Churning flames exploded from the town house’s windows and doors, the red tongues separating every piece of the structure. Blackened framing timbers spun end over end before plowing into the dry weeds surrounding the building. Blake shielded his eyes just enough to see the demonic figures spiraling upward in the gout of fire, slashing and jabbing the burning magnesium blades of their weapons in all directions.

  Screams rose from the garden square as the people gathered there now saw the armored demons racing toward them, the ones on the ground howling as they ran, those aloft blotting out the night sky with the unfurling of their leathery wings. The adults scooped up the children who had been laughing and playing before Time had stopped, shielding them with their bodies as they huddled against the base of the office tower, or running with them toward the unlit alleys beyond. Their panicked escape was cut off by the shouting, grimacing horde that ran into the streets ahead of them, then turned and swept their weapons like scythes, to drive the people back to the square.

  * * *

  The young witch called Anna stood against the window of the Devil’s office. What she saw below sent the cold blood racing through her veins.

  In the garden square, all Hell was breaking loose—literally.

  She watched as a four-armed demon, short-bladed cuirasses in each fist, carved up a human figure, jabbing and slashing with the weapons. The process was a model of predatory efficiency: in a few seconds, there was nothing but a dismembered carcass at a screaming woman’s feet. The witch slowly nodded, enraptured by the sight.

  Behind her, Anna could hear the stampede of feet in the office’s lobby, as the terrified supplicants scrabbled and clawed for the exit. Perhaps those human fools thought that the vibrations hammering the building were those of an earthquake, and they would be safer beyond the shivering walls. The thought of what would greet them outside brought a crazed smile to her face.

  Glints of light played across the window as she gazed down. Those were from the staffs and burning blades striking at the branches of the peach tree in the center of the garden, the demons’ wrath mounting with the futility of their attack. Each blow left the tree unharmed, a lightning flash hurtling the assailant onto his back, cursing.

  At the top of the surrounding towers, the winged demons had flown up and stationed themselves, crouching and leaning forward to scan the chaos below and search for prey. To the young witch looking up at them they seemed like gargoyles come to life.

  As she watched, one unfolded its wings and vaulted out into the night sky. It swooped through a wide parabola between the other towers, its talons seizing at last upon the concrete ledge immediately before the witch’s gaze. The creature had the slavering snout of a jackal, eyes inflamed with hunger and cruelty as it peered through the window at her.

  The glass burst into razor-edged shards, flying into Anna’s face and across the span of the office, as the demon thrust its claws toward her. She was already bleeding before she landed on her back. The tips of the demon’s yellow fangs imbedded themselves in her throat—

  But only for a moment. The demon drew back, cringing from the starlike emblem tattooed on the back of Anna’s neck, revealed when her dark hair had been swept aside.

  “Yes…” She wiped the tiny drops of blood from under her chin as she knelt before the demon. “We belong … to the same master…”

  With a shriek of frustrated hunger, the demon spun away from the witch and launched itself out the shattered window and into the night sky.

  * * *

  Hank and Blake stood back-to-back, surrounded by carnage.

  “Maybe we should run for it—” Hank held Ren-Lei tighter against himself. “Just get her away from here—”

  “No.” The soldier’s grimy overcoat was spattered with fresh blood. “These bastards will come right after us, no matter where we go. They catch us someplace where we can’t maneuver, they’ll rip us to shreds.”

  “Then we gotta stay here and fight.” Hank lowered his head, peering across the garden square. “They haven’t spotted us yet—but they will any second now.”

  Blake nodded toward the infant in the other man’s arms. “What’re you going to do about her?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at the tangled undergrowth behind them. “I can’t just hide her somewhere. Even if they don’t spot her, she could still get trampled in the fight.” He held the baby out toward Blake. “Here—hold her for a second. I got an idea.”

  Ren-Lei began crying as soon as Blake had her in his hand. Careful to keep the coat’s blackened sleeves away from the squalling infant, he watched as Hank ripped off his shirt, then tore it into one long rag. He drew the cloth around his shoulders, knotting an improvised sling at his bared chest. “Put her in there,” he ordered Blake, “and make sure it’s tight.”

  Blake tied the loose ends around the other man’s waist and shoulder. The baby’s tiny form was now snugged motionless against Hank’s chest. She whimpered at her confines for a moment, before her eyes opened, gazing up at the giant with complete trust.

  “You just take it easy.” He tucked his chin down so he could look at her. “We’ll get this sorted out—”

  As Ren-Lei smiled and made soft cooing sounds, Hank saw a bright spark reflected in her dark eyes. The spark grew swiftly larger at the same time as he heard a shrill, ululating cry from the sky above. He looked up and saw a horrific visage, eyes widened with lethal delight, vipers writhing in its mouth. Clawed fists swung one blade of a double-ended spear toward Hank’s skull, flames licking up from its blades. The demon’s power dive was so rapid, there was time only to shield Ren-Lei; he crouched over, bent spine toward the creature.

  Something hit him from behind, but it wasn’t the scything edge of the demon’s spear. He fell hard onto his shoulder, still holding the baby to his chest in the sling. At the periphery of his sight, he glimpsed a grime-encrusted figure vaulting above him, one of Blake’s hands on his shoulder, the other swinging a shovel that had been left behind by one of the people who had been working in the garden. Sparks shot from the magnesium-forged blade as the shovel connected with it. The shaft of the tool snapped, the shovel’s blade hitting the ground yards away. Blake used the splintered shaft for another parrying blow, which sent the spear pinwheeling out of the demon’s grasp. Blake’s leap carried him high above the demon and, as though it were the point of a lightning bolt, the wooden shaft darted hard between the demon’s eyes, driving it stumbling backward, arms flailing.

  The demon regained its balance as Blake landed lithely upon his toes with one hand outstretched. Vipers hissed as the demon swept up its spear and swung around one of its fiery blades; it missed Blake’s chest by an inch as he darted to one side, the weapon’s daggerlike point piercing the wooden shaft. Before the demon could wrest the spear free, Blake snapped the fingertips of his other hand into its throat. The quick impact was enough to bring steaming blood vomiting around the snakeheads; their jeweled eyes went dull, scale-covered bodies dangling limp as Blake jumped back, letting the demon drop at his feet.

  Bent over t
o catch his breath, Blake watched as Hank got to his feet and went over to the corpse. “What the hell are you doing?” Black smoke had started billowing up from the demon’s fatal wounds. Hank reached through the fumes to undo the strap of the demon’s helmet. “What do you want that for?”

  “Got another idea…” Fanning the smoke away from Ren-Lei, Hank stepped back with the armor piece. “This kid’s going to be as safe as possible.” He placed the helmet over the baby like a magnesium turtle shell, running the strap under the linen sling and drawing it tight to hold it in place. “There—now she’s a tank.”

  “Get ready—” Blake straightened up. “Here come that sonuvabitch’s buddies.”

  A chorus of guttural shouts struck their ears as four demons charged toward them. The one in front brandished a flaming axe in each of its three arms. Hank ducked under the weapons like a boxer, then spun around with a horizontal kick, impaling the lead demon on the heel of his boot so hard that its bowels exploded and the severed ends of its spine tore through its back. He yanked his foot back, and two of the other demons went sprawling over their leader’s still-quivering corpse. As it fell, Hank caught a pair of axes from its lifeless hands. A downward swipe split one horned head into equal halves, while an uppercut slashed through the third demon’s neck. He pivoted, ready to dispatch the last of the group, only to see that Blake had already run it through with the spear’s fiery blade.

  Blake tugged the weapon free and stared down at its bloodied length. “Hold on…” He studied the spear’s intricately worked shaft. “I’ve seen this thing somewhere before … He was holding one just like it … The statue in the church…” Amazement sounded in Blake’s voice as he held the double-bladed weapon up before his eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” Hank stood back-to-back with the soldier as more demons encircled them. Still gripping both axes, Hank glanced away from the assembling horde, looking over his shoulder at his blood-encrusted ally. “What statue?”

  “I think … this is his weapon!” The flames leapt higher from the blades at either end of the spear as Blake cried out. “The spear that Michael fought the Devil with, when he threw him out of Heaven. Somehow … it’s found its way to me!”