Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel

by Gareth Jefferson Jones K. W. Jeter

  He heard what his father was saying; he heard the scraped, croaking words. And he even knew what they meant. As he lay motionless on the hot, fissured ground of the Devil’s kingdom, he saw past his father kneeling above him, to the surrounding rock-fanged pits. From them, he could hear the mingled whimpers and cries of other tortured souls. Those wordless sounds, human as they were, meant as much to him as what his own father had just said.

  Maybe … His disconnected thoughts inched slowly through his skull. Maybe I would’ve cared … a long time ago. Before the Devil had stolen his will from him. Maybe what his dead and eternally damned father had just told him, those few words, would have meant everything to him. But it took will to listen, to care. To connect. Now, words—even these—were just noise, with no more meaning than that of the fiery winds rolling across Hell’s terrain.

  “Son…” The blackened figure peered more closely at him. “What’s happened … to you?” Fingers of deracinated bone reached toward Nathaniel’s shoulders, halting and trembling a few inches away from him. “Why don’t you … get up?… Why not … escape?”

  “I…” He spoke without emotion, blank as empty air. “I don’t know.”

  A terrible thought seemed to rise up into his father’s face. “Nat … The Devil … Did he … touch you?… Did he … take anything out of you … Out of your heart?”

  Nathaniel nodded silently.

  “Did it look … like smoke? Did it … sparkle? Like diamonds?”

  An even slower nod. “Yes … I think so … Maybe…”

  “What … did he do with it? Where did … it go?”

  “He burned it,” answered Nathaniel. “It disappeared. Gone…”

  “That’s … not good.” The bones of his father’s hands clenched into white fists. “He took away your will … to resist him, Nat.… That’s … what he did to me. To everyone … he tempts. But once he has taken our will … he does not destroy it. He keeps it safe. Then … when our souls are trapped here…” One hand pointed to the surrounding fires. “He gives us our willpower back again … to mock us…” His father’s lungs labored visibly with the effort of speaking. “Because here … trapped in Hell … our willpower can do us no good. It only … pains us more…”

  “You’re right … I suppose…” He didn’t know why he bothered to speak, to agree. “It doesn’t matter to me. Not anymore…”

  “But it should!” His father gnashed the black stumps of the teeth in his exposed jaws. “Because it could be different … for you, Nat. You’re not dead yet … and not damned. You could escape from here … if you still had your will. I could … steal it back for you … if it existed. But it’s gone…”

  “Too bad…” If he had been capable of wishing, he might have preferred that his father would leave so he could simply gaze up at the fire-blackened crags of Hell’s ceiling, forever. “But if it’s gone … it’s gone…”

  “I have … an idea.” Nathaniel’s father pointed to his own chest, and the shapes sluggishly moving inside its cage. Something brighter sparked there. “I can give you the will … that the Devil gave back to me … My own will. To replace the one … you’ve lost.” The parched voice turned softer. “Then you can go back … to the surface world … But it won’t be easy, Nat … And it will hurt you. It will hurt a lot…”

  “Don’t bother…” Pain or no pain, it no longer concerned him. “I don’t want to go back. Not anymore.”

  “But if you go back … you can fight the Devil…”

  “No. I can’t…” Nathaniel shook his head. “It’s impossible to win, I see that now. The Devil was right. You need an army to defeat him. And I don’t have an army. It doesn’t exist…”

  “That’s only what he wants … you to think.” His father reached out to shake his son to his senses, but drew back again before his hands could make contact with Nathaniel’s skin. “He wants you to believe … that everything … is hopeless. Just like it is here … in Hell. But that’s wrong, Nat … Fighting for what’s right is always worth it … And if you need an army … raise one yourself. So many people in this world have suffered … because of his evil … So use them. Show him … he’s wrong…”

  No reaction came from Nathaniel. The things his dead father spoke of—they were all just dreams. Damned and sent to Hell for all eternity, the man was still the weak, wishful creature he had been in the world of the living, and without the excuse of alcohol now, which had fueled all his worthless fantasies before. Drink, then dream, until all the bottles were empty, and only the dreams remained. And not even the courage to keep from selling his own son to Death, just to buy more time to drink, and dream. What did it matter? No more now than it had then. It was all just dreams. Big talk, thought Nathaniel. That’s all.

  “Nat … You have to decide…” His father spoke again. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I told you … I don’t care.”

  “But you must care!” said his father. “If I give you my will … you can escape … Try to force yourself … to think…”

  “I can’t … I don’t want to.”

  “Then I will … decide for you … I’ll do … what is best for you. Like I should have done … for you before.”

  His father had warned him that the process would be painful. Even by the standards of Hell. Nathaniel soon found that his father hadn’t lied about that.

  The blackened bones of his father’s hand seized Nathaniel’s wrist at last, gripping tighter and tighter. His own hand burst into flames at the touch, the scathing fire traveling up his arm, all the way to his shoulder, as though the father’s damnation had somehow ignited the living flesh of his son. The absence of will was not enough to shield him from such torment. Nathaniel screamed in agony, shrill and high, like a child whose hand had been forced upon a red-hot stove. He tried to pull his hand free of his father’s grasp, but was too weak to do so. All he could do was go on screaming as his father took Nathaniel’s hand and placed it upon the charred bones of his chest. Flames leapt out from between his father’s ribs and breastbone, fierce and consuming.

  Slowly, the transfer began. Just as his father had also promised. The glimmering substance inside his father’s chest, brighter than the flames, seeped past the heart’s black, hard knot, and out into the open. The shimmering substance hung there for a moment, like a cloud of diamonds, then moved along Nathaniel’s burning arm, toward his chest.

  Gasping for breath, he dropped his head, and could see the bright mist of his father’s will settle at the base of his throat. Its luminance dimmed as it seeped inside his chest, toward the straining pulse of his own heart. A few sparks rested on his bared skin for a moment, then disappeared with the rest.

  Hell itself disappeared as Nathaniel closed his eyes. His hand and arm were still aflame, but the agony had been extinguished. All such immaterial concerns had been thrown miles away from him, along with the burning stones and craters of this infernal domain. All he knew was the infinite space inside himself, and the white bolt coursing up his spine and into the center of his consciousness.

  He clenched his fists as his father’s grip upon his wrist loosened and fell away. The flames that had coursed up his arm faded and died out, leaving his skin scorched and blistered. His muscles tautened, swelling his chest as he drew in one deep breath after another. As he looked down at himself, he could see his heart pumping fresh blood through every tissue, restoring the life that had been slowly ebbing from him.

  His father sank down onto his knees, his reddened eyes staring blankly in front of himself. Nathaniel stood upright and looked at the blackened corpse crouching at his feet.

  “What … happened…” Faint words stumbled from the lipless mouth. He looked up at the figure before him. “Nat … is that you…”

  He doesn’t even have the will to remember. The sad realization filled Nathaniel. He filed the knowledge away with his other dark memories. All the things that he couldn’t forget, that he would have given the world to be able to let g
o. Just as his father had now been able to. He doesn’t remember, not even what he just gave up.

  “Yes, Dad.” He nodded slowly. “It’s me.”

  “There’s so much … that I wanted to tell you…” Confused, disjointed thoughts crawled behind the dead eyes. “I wanted to ask you … to forgive me … forgive me, Nat…”

  “It’s okay.” He reached down again. “I forgive you.”

  “Do you … really…?”

  “For everything,” said Nathaniel. It was all the absolution he could give. “I forgave you long ago. Before you even died.”

  It was enough. The fragmented mind behind the other’s gaze, which had held nothing but sin and remorse, clouded over. The charred body toppled backward, sprawling without motion, without will, into the flames tormenting his flesh—

  But not his mind. Not anymore.

  I’ve given him what he needs, Nathaniel realized. For the rest of Time … He looked at the corpse, glimpsing the tiny spark of salvation glowing in its eyes. Even in a place such as this charnel inferno, that was enough, for someone who had once been damned, to now find peace.

  Nathaniel gave a slow, silent nod, as he understood even more. For his father to be at peace here, in the center of the Devil’s domain—that was a victory. I can’t take him from here, thought Nathaniel. But I can leave him here with his dignity. That will be our triumph …

  From far away, at the earth’s surface, he could hear his own name being spoken. Someone was calling for him, in greatest need. He turned and walked away, across the flames and toward his fate.

  20.

  The fire had torn open the sleeve of his leather jacket. Past the burnt edges, he could see his skin, burned by the flames that had traveled up his arm as his father’s will had been transferred to him. That pain had been many times worse, unendurable, but it had ended. This was the pain of his own flesh, throbbing with each pulse of the blood beneath, each flexing of the muscles and tendons.

  I’m lucky, thought Nathaniel. To feel that—

  He scanned across the stone chamber, beneath the dark shaft leading up to the earth’s surface. Once he had stepped out of this domain, beyond the flames and smoke of Hell, the gaps that had broken open in the walls had closed, their jagged edges grinding toward each other like the movement of boulders in an earthquake, sealing off the infernal vista. The splintered skulls and bones of the murdered infants still lay scattered about the space, grim reminders of the enemies responsible for their deaths.

  Touching his own scorched flesh with a fingertip produced an involuntary wince from him. It would be hard to put up much of a fight, with his arm burned like that, once he managed to rejoin Blake and the hit man Hank. But then again, he thought, that’s not the kind of fighting I do.

  He walked underneath the shaft, kicking aside the broken pieces of the spiral staircase that had filled it before. Whatever he was going to do, whatever part he would play in the battle against the Devil, he knew he had to rejoin his comrades as quickly as possible. He closed his eyes, blocking out everything around him, letting his pulse and breath slow …

  “That’s not right.” He had opened his eyes as soon as he had completed the spell to transport himself back up to street level. Tilting his head back, he had expected to see the ornately timbered ceiling of the abandoned town house; that was the spot for which he had aimed. Instead, he saw the roiling storm clouds of the night sky, rain pelting down toward his face.

  But the town house’s floorboards were underfoot. He brought his gaze back down and scanned the area. He could see now that he was surrounded by the ruins of the structure, the walls flattened and pushed outward as though a bomb had gone off in the middle of them. The rubble stretched out in all directions, shards of broken windows glittering across the broken wooden beams. In the distance, the dark silhouette of the Devil’s office tower loomed above the garden square at its base. The shrieks and cries of battle assaulted his ears; he could make out the demonic legions rampaging chaotically through the space, their bat-winged counterparts swooping above, slashing at any human beings unfortunate enough to have been trapped below.

  That’s where they are, Nathaniel realized. He couldn’t spot Blake and Hank, but knew they would be in the thick of whatever fighting was going on. If they’re still alive—

  His first instinct was to rush over to the garden square and join in the action, however it was going, whatever he might be able to do. For a combat-hardened soldier such as Blake and a giant hit man like Hank, it might be a battle—but for the other human beings caught there, it was nothing more than slaughter. He could see it from here, the weapons slashing and tearing, their blades wreathed in flame. On every side, the stones were washed with the steaming blood of the innocent. Men and women and children alike, their lifeless bodies tossed to either side by the rampaging demonic horde. That was how the Devil worked, unleashing chaos without regard to those who got swept up in it. Something like that wasn’t the Devil’s concern; all he wanted was death and pain, in endless supply. And now he was getting it.

  Yeah, and what’re you going to do about it? Nathaniel clenched his fists at his side, trying to force an answer from his brain. Down in the stone chamber, far below the town house’s ruins, he had shoved that question aside, figuring that he would know what to do once he got here. Hank and Blake might be good at killing demons, either by tearing their heads off or running them through with some kind of weapon, but his own talents were a little less crudely physical in nature. Maybe some kind of spell? But what? Stopping Time had bought some precious breathing room for them, allowing Hank and Blake to escape from the Devil and reach the surface, but what good would it do now? Even if he got to the square and pulled off the spell—and right now, after the marathon session through which he had put himself down below, his resources along that particular line felt close to exhaustion—he might be able to stop the slaughter for as long as his strength held out, but then what? As soon as the Time-stopping spell faded away—and it would—then the demons would continue with their orgy of destruction, not even aware that anything else had happened. A lot of good that would’ve accomplished, Nathaniel mused glumly.

  As his brain scurried desperately along its unyielding circuit, something his dead and damned father had said popped into his thoughts. If you need an army … you could raise one. Nathaniel frowned, trying to remember what exactly his father had said. The rest came suddenly: From all the people who have suffered because of him.

  Perhaps … that was possible. For him.

  His thoughts slowly began to take shape. Into a realization that had never dawned on him before.

  I belong to both worlds now, thought Nathaniel. To both the living and the dead …

  No one else could do what he could. No one else had that power. Everything that had happened to him through the hours of that single day—all that he had seen and done—served to tell him that.

  For a moment, it felt as if he were standing on the edge of a great, empty chasm. Yet one that was contained within himself. A dizzying perspective, to know at last that he had become greater than his master.

  His powers could work in the realm of the living—and that of the dead. Even his master hadn’t understood that. Death had been concerned only with his own plane of existence. Death might be able to walk among the living, but only to reap their souls and send them off to Purgatory to be judged.

  I can do more, thought Nathaniel. To help win this battle. Perhaps only for a while. Just as he could halt Time, but not end it—

  He sensed the chasm inside him filling with awesome possibility. Something of which only his powers were capable. But which might also encompass his own destruction.

  Such an undertaking might be possible for him—but it would call upon every resource within his being. It was another kind of spell, one that tore down the barrier between the worlds—and one that he had never attempted before. And worse—one that nobody had ever even contemplated before. The spells his master had taught
him had merely helped him do his job of reaping souls. Anything else, he had been sternly instructed to put out of his mind.

  Of course, he remembered Death telling him, it is possible to create new spells. Ones that no one has created before. But you cannot do that.

  He had demanded to know why. He had learned all the spells that Death had taught him, mastered them, gathered souls with them. Why couldn’t he make a new spell?

  Because—Death had patiently spoken—for you to create a spell, to bring it forth from inside your being, you would first need to be the master of yourself. The spell would need to come from your own innermost certainties and desires. But for that, Nathaniel, you would have to know, at last, exactly who you are. And more … You would finally need to decide to which realm of existence you want to belong. To that other world, in which your body exists—or here with me, in this quieter world where the darkness inside you is at home. You would have to choose between life, and pain—and my existence, in which all such human burdens are but a memory that can no longer hurt you.

  His master’s words faded from his thoughts.

  It had taken him a long time—ten years—to figure out, but he had made his decision. His choice. The world to which he belonged. The will that his dead father had given him—that had been the last piece he had needed to complete the puzzle. The will that he had lost, that the Devil had stolen from him—that had been a child’s will, still immature and ignorant. What he had now inside himself, his father’s will, was one that had become mature, through grief and suffering.

  And that was what had allowed the great understanding to unveil itself inside him.

  Nathaniel gave a slow nod, the realization flooding through him. I belong to both—the living and the dead. He was at home here, in the world of those who still breathed, and whose hearts beat in their chests, and who still wanted so much, no matter the pain and cost, no matter how much those desires tormented them. But he would be at home there as well, in that other world, the one he shared with his master Death. And that means, he realized, that any magic I create—it would work there as well as here. In both realms. A spell for the living and the dead …