Crashing Paradise

by Christopher Golden

  And though the she-wolf fought valiantly, never tiring as she brought down one vampire after another, as well as the occasional Drow that had come to the leeches’ aid, she could not help but feel afraid of what the future held.

  The Devourer was coming; no matter how hard they fought, how many of their enemies were vanquished, it still did not alter that fact.

  The Devourer is coming.

  A vampire bared its fangs with a ferocious hiss, springing at her. They wrestled upon the ground, and she buried her muzzle into the soft flesh of the vampire’s abdomen. He shrieked in surprise and agony as she sank her fangs in, tearing away chunks of cold, undead flesh.

  Her muzzle stained crimson, the she-wolf climbed to her feet, licking putrid blood from her face. The vampires were no longer attacking, and she wondered what mischief they could be perpetrating now.

  Then she felt it, a warm tingling sensation in her belly, traveling like fire into her veins. She crumpled to the ground, all feeling in her extremities quickly draining away.

  The sounds of fighting were all around her as the vampires slowly converged. The one whose stomach she had tasted had joined his brothers and sisters. He was smiling down on her, his teeth razor-sharp, glistening wetly.

  In his hand he held a glass vial, the contents of which reeked very much like the contents of the vampire’s belly.

  It stank of poison.

  DR.Graves’s ectoplasmic pistols barked repeatedly, phantom bullets finding their targets as he drifted above the battlefield.

  He was trying to help in any way that he could, but it all seemed so overwhelming. Vampires, Drow, and other unearthly things peered from the thick jungle, watching eagerly, as if waiting for their moment.

  Waiting for the Menagerie to fall.

  A fresh group of Drow exploded from the primeval forest, moving across Eden to aid their fellow warriors. Graves directed himself downward, a scream of fury upon his lips. The ghost aimed his guns, firing at the startled Drow soldiers.

  Their bodies twitched and danced as the ectoplasmic bullets hit them, but they did not die.

  Something was protecting them.

  The Drow chattered at one another in their guttural tongue, one of them producing what appeared to be some kind of net.

  An unnerving sensation rippled through his spectral form, some kind of cautionary sense warning him of danger.

  Alarmed, the ghost of Dr. Graves started to make a swift retreat so that he could assess any dangers, but his instinct came too late. The Drow moved with astonishing speed, tossing the strangely woven net toward him.

  The specter felt the effects of the net the moment it fell on him. Impossible as it seemed, he had been captured. The Drow dragged him to the ground by the weighted ends of the unusual snare.

  Lying beneath the mesh he felt his body grow solid, and a weakness that rendered his limbs useless. Pathetically he struggled, trying to free himself, but to no avail.

  The Drow laughed, amused by the plight of the helpless ghost.

  THE battle raged.

  One spell after another left Conan Doyle’s lips, powerful blasts of magical fury that caused the attacking Drow and vampires to ignite into flames.

  But it didn’t stop them.

  Powerful magic was at work here, some spell that locked the life force of these pathetic creatures in place, allowing them to attack, even after their bodies had been damaged beyond repair.

  Powerful magic indeed.

  Attacking as well as defending, he chanced a quick glance around the battlefield that Eden had become, wanting to check on the progress of the others. It was much the same with them. No matter how many were struck down by superior strength, weapons, or powerful elemental magics, their attackers continued to come at them.

  He wanted to offer words of encouragement, to urge them to carry on with their struggle, but it all seemed pointless. Of course they would continue to fight—it was what they did.

  It all seems so much harder of late, the mage thought, calling forth winds so fierce that they tore boulders up from the ground, crushing Eden’s invaders beneath their weight.

  The closer the Demogorgon drew, the greater the evil, and the mightier the struggle.

  The ground trembled beneath him. Magic crackled at his fingertips as he spun toward the disturbance, and he felt his heart cease to beat.

  The half-breed, Duergar, held Ceridwen aloft by her throat, her feet dangling above the ground.

  The monster will die for this.

  About to unleash a spell that would have stripped the meat from Duergar’s bones, Conan Doyle was struck from behind by a hex of such dark power that it hammered him forward and shattered his concentration. His own magic dispelled harmlessly into the soil.

  Jacket smoldering, he dropped to the ground, rolling onto his back to extinguish the searing flames.

  Abaddon towered above him, red, leathery flesh animated with the sigils of magic that Conan Doyle knew all too well.

  Many of those sigils had once belonged to friends and allies whose lives and magic had been stolen by the demon.

  “Monster,” Conan Doyle growled. The demon would be ready for brute force or blunt sorcery, so he summoned a spell that would have caused a brood of spiders to appear in the meat of Abaddon’s brain.

  The magic erupted from his hands and dark swirls scoured the air between them, like static on the face of the world.

  That cloud of buzzing energy struck Abaddon, but the demon was merely staggered.

  Conan Doyle stared. The Hell-Lord’s infernal power had deflected the spell easily.

  “Is that the best you can do?” Abaddon asked.

  With a savage grin, the demon hooked his fingers into talons and seemed to tear magic from the air itself. The hex hurtled downward and Conan Doyle hastily erected a defensive ward. The demon’s power shredded his defenses, crushing Conan Doyle to the ground.

  A suffocating blanket of darkness fell over him as he fought to remain conscious, the thought of Ceridwen in the clutches of a monster his last pitiful thought before it all went to black.

  Ceri.

  I’ve failed you.

  NO matter how many Clay crushed, maimed, or tore limb from limb, vampire and Drow alike, they kept coming at him. The Drow horde stabbed at him with spears and swords, vampires sinking their hungry fangs uselessly into his hard, cracked flesh.

  Clay roared, his thundering voice echoing about Paradise.

  The more he tried to kill, the more enraged he became.

  The bodies were piling up at his feet, bloody and broken, but still they tried to fight him. He wanted to know where Eve was, but the creatures he fought remained silent, speaking only in the language of violence.

  “Where is she?” he bellowed, snatching up a Drow soldier by the top of his head. The huge creature squirmed in his grasp, ugly face twisting in pain.

  “Tell me!”

  But the Drow remained silent, squealing and grunting as he tried to free himself. Clay exerted just a bit more pressure and felt the soldier’s skull give way like an eggshell. He tossed the nearly headless body aside, ready to try again . . . when he saw her.

  Eve emerged breathlessly from the jungle, coming to a sudden stop when she spotted him.

  Clay called her name. With a burst of energy, he ripped his way through the remaining attackers to get to her. “Are you all right?”

  She stood staring at him, a strange smile dancing at the edges of her perfect mouth.

  “One by one they fall,” she said, gazing out at the carnage unfolding in Eden.

  Clay looked away from her, observing his teammates’ fate. Squire was lost beneath a squirming mass of attackers, Graves had somehow been trapped within a net, and the shewolf lay still upon the ground. Even Ceridwen and Conan Doyle seemed nearly beaten. The Fey princess dangled in the clutches of a giant, warrior beast. Conan Doyle lay still upon the ground as the demon Abaddon loomed above him.

  “Time to pull their asses from the fire,” Cl
ay said, turning toward Eve.

  But Eve had vanished and been replaced by another—a creature who seemed Clay’s own mirror image. The doppelgänger had the same earthen flesh, the same build, the same face. Entirely the same.

  Except for the eyes. Something was missing in the eyes.

  There was coldness there, a black void that drew him in.

  “Who?” Clay started to ask.

  The other struck with the speed of a cobra, his fist connecting with Clay’s forehead, fingers slipping into his skull.

  Clay could not see the point of impact, but he felt it. The enemy’s touch had not shattered his earthen flesh, but melded with it—merged.

  “I am Legion,” the other said, flexing the fingers of his hand inside Clay’s skull. “And I’m very glad to meet you, brother.”

  And everything went black.

  Black as his brother’s bottomless gaze.

  CLAY remembered.

  Like layers of sediment churned up from the bottom of a lake, he remembered each stratum of his long existence. The most recent were the easiest to recall, his years fighting alongside Conan Doyle and his Menagerie, fighting for the good of the world. With the mage he had found a reason to exist, his talents given purpose.

  Was this why he had been abandoned by the Creator and cast adrift into the flow of the world. He would like to think it was.

  The next layer was murkier, filled with poison—the dangerous recollections of a time when his mind was not his own. There was so much that he would rather not recall, but it was part of his history nonetheless. He had been sent to murder any who opposed his government masters—enemies of the state they had been called. Scientists, spies, or dictators, it didn’t matter. Controlled by his captors, Clay saw them as prey, a mission to complete before moving on to the next, and the one after that. How many had he killed? He saw countless faces in his mind. Expressions etched in terror emerged from the billowing silt of his memory, but there were far too many to count.

  He was not proud of that stage of his existence and found himself delving deeper into the next. Clay saw how he had come to be under their thrall—the army as they brought him down. But he wanted to be past this, sinking deeper.

  Deeper.

  Clay had wandered the planet searching for a purpose—using his unique nature to help those in need, believing that this was what He would have wanted, why the Almighty had left him alone.

  Alone.

  But it hadn’t always been that way.

  And deeper still.

  SQUIRE was flattered. All this hullabaloo over one hobgoblin.

  As the vampires and soldier Drows fell upon him, Squire wondered at the fate of his friends. There was some powerful magic going on here. It came off his attackers in stinking waves.

  Which sucked big time for all of them.

  He didn’t have the room to swing the sword anymore; they were too close, grabbing at him with clawed hands. He dropped the blade, switching to a Gemini dagger instead. He didn’t give them time to grab him, constantly moving in a circle, gouging out eyes and slashing throats.

  Fat fucking lot of good it’s doing.

  Squire could hear sounds of struggle all around him, but couldn’t take his eyes off this bunch for a second.

  The dagger cut through their flesh like tissue paper, the special iron-and-silver alloy of his own design once again proving its worth. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up, though. The years of nachos, donuts, and pork rinds had slowed him down considerably.

  Conan Doyle had always warned him about the excesses.

  He jabbed the dagger deep into the eye socket of a vampire that had gotten too close. The leech’s shriek of pain was like an injection of nitrous oxide to his slowing engine, supercharging him for just a bit more of the ultraviolence.

  From the back of his mind a thought bubbled to the surface.

  He and the boss had talked about situations like this. If things looked bleak—like they were all going down hard—his job was to escape at all costs, find reinforcements, and make the enemy pay.

  He had dismissed his employer’s request, not believing there would ever come a time when Conan Doyle would be on the ropes. It had been a ridiculous thought, but that had been before the coming of the Devourer.

  A lot had changed since then.

  A trio of the attackers that encircled him lunged at once, and as he spun to deflect their assault, others came from behind.

  It wasn’t a good situation, and he could see himself going down for the count.

  And where would they be, then?

  Conan Doyle had told him that in the darkest of moments, his ability to walk the shadows might make him the variable between humanity’s survival, and its extinction. It was an awful lot of weight placed upon a hobgoblin’s shoulders, but what was a guy to do?

  A vampire took hold of his knife arm and sank her fangs into his hand to get him to drop the blade. Squire screamed and released the dagger. The only upside was that there were more where that one had come from.

  There wasn’t much time. It had to be now.

  They were all over him, forcing him to the ground. The stink was awful. Some of the vampires’ heads descended, their fangs elongating in anticipation of a little hobgoblin juice. Squire reached into the pocket of his cargo pants, searching for one of the accessories he’d brought along when he learned that there might be vampires in the equation.

  His fingers fumbled over loose pieces of candy, a pack of gum, a bottle opener, and a pack of Tic-Tacs, finally finding the object of his frantic search.

  “There you are,” he mumbled beneath his breath.

  The grenade was tiny, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be effective. It was modeled after the Special Forces Thermite grenades, but with a little pinch of mojo.

  “Got a surprise for you fuckers,” Squire said, bringing the golf-ball-sized explosive up to his mouth. They tried to take it from him, to tear it from his hands, but luck just wasn’t on their side.

  He pulled the pin and let the banger roll from his grasp.

  Most of his attackers looked down to see what he had dropped as he closed his eyes tightly and attempted to scramble away.

  Squire rolled onto his stomach and started to crawl just as he heard the grenade explode. A blast of heat seared his back, like a piece of the sun had landed in Eden.

  Their screams were music to his ears.

  He’d worked long and hard designing those grenades, experimenting to find the right amount of magic to duplicate the heat and intensity of the sun for the right amount of time so that only the leeches present would be reduced to extra crispy.

  The legs of his pants ignited, and he felt the skin beneath immediately begin to blister. Squire instinctively rolled around on the damp ground, extinguishing the flames. The burns would be added to the other injuries that throbbed painfully on his body.

  When he opened his eyes, Squire saw that the grenade had been effective. Most of the vampires were gone, reduced to ash, and Drow lay burning upon the ground. He forced himself to stand, and saw the most terrifying of sights. Even though he didn’t want to believe it, his worst fears had become a reality.

  They had all fallen.

  The demon Abaddon loomed above the body of Conan Doyle. Squire’s heart did a little flip at the sight, never imagining that he would ever see such a thing. It was no better for Ceridwen, her limp body being dragged across the Garden by the son of a bitch, Duergar.

  This is bad; this is real bad.

  It looked like Graves was somehow trapped within a net, Jelena unconscious or dead upon the ground, and Clay . . .

  Squire stared in disbelief at what he was seeing.

  “Oh, shit,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  He wanted to help them, but knew that it had gone well beyond that. The best that he could do right now—much to his chagrin—was to run.

  To escape.

  He made his move toward the thickest part of the forest, his
body screaming from more injuries than he even knew he had. Squire’s head began to swim, and it took all that he could muster not to pass out.

  The darkness of the trees was calling to him, but he knew that this, too, would be fraught with danger. He couldn’t think about that now. He had to get away, to plan the next step, to find others to help rescue Conan Doyle and the Menagerie—and if that wasn’t possible, to find some way to make sure the demon’s plans were derailed.

  Abaddon spun around just as he began to back toward the jungle.

  “Going somewhere, troll?” the demon asked, black sigils slithering around on his crimson flesh.

  “You know where you can shove your troll, pig fucker,” Squire yelled, trying to keep from passing out as he threw himself into the forest.

  He saw the patch of shadow and stumbled toward it.

  “You’re going nowhere!” he heard Abaddon call.

  A wave of magical force pursued him, destroying everything in its path as he stumbled toward the pool of shadow.

  Squire flung himself toward the shadow cast by the overhanging leaves of a gigantic, prehistoric fern, the fetid breath of destruction hot upon his neck.

  13

  ABADDON had the Menagerie dragged back to the encampment and put on display. As Duergar, Legion, and assorted vampires and Drows brought Conan Doyle into the camp, a strange hush fell over the demons and abominations that had answered his summons to become part of this revolution in Paradise. The Hell-Lord felt their awe. Faces—and what passed for faces—turned to watch him as he passed.

  They knew he was the author of this glory, and now his control over them was complete.

  The Menagerie were dropped onto the ground and beaten insensate. Most had been unconscious already. Now Abaddon walked among them, admiring what his plans had wrought. He had studied them, each and every one, learning of their strengths and weaknesses, and had planned accordingly.