Crashing Paradise

by Christopher Golden

  Eve studied the encampment of the enemy a few seconds longer, then raced along a branch that should not have been able to support her weight. She leaped from it to a lower limb of another, thicker tree. She scrambled up through its tangle of leaves and leaped again. From tree to tree, up trunks and across branches, she traveled around the perimeter of the dying, withered clearing without a rustle or sway that could be attributed to anything but wind.

  Her fingers extended into talons, she lowered herself hand over hand down through the screened interior of an evergreen born at the dawn of the world, then dropped to the ground.

  Eve landed in a crouch, suffused with the rush of angel blood. The wind whispered in her ears, yet it felt to her that it had slowed, that she moved now in between moments.

  One of the vampire tents—a nylon camping setup spattered with dark bloodstains—stood thirty feet away. Eve scanned her surroundings. Demons moved in the Garden, sampling its delights, but none were nearby. The soil had become more arid, the grass more withered, in just the few moments since Eve had first taken measure of the camp. The edges of the tainted area continued to spread. As she paused, it touched the tree from which she’d just descended, and the bark facing the camp began to rot, then blacken. Leaves fell from the branches above her.

  Hatred filled her with terrible venom. Eve darted from beneath that doomed tree and raced across the intervening space toward the vampires’ tent. She scented them inside, two of the hollow leeches. Swift and sure as an angel, she slipped inside and brought them final death. Young, brash things they were. One of them sighed upon spying her, and she tore off its head. The other saw her—saw the changes the angel’s blood had made in her—and sank to his knees wearing a look of surrender and damnation. Her talons raked its throat, then plunged into its chest and crushed the frozen, hardened nut of its heart.

  She sliced open the back of the tent to reveal the view of Duergar’s cairn that she had planned. This spot on the perimeter lay nearer to the stone dwelling than any other. A pair of vampires—messengers or scouts—raced across the tortured ground toward the cocoon, where Abaddon must even now have been holding court. On this side of the cairn were perhaps a dozen Drows. Two of them sat not far from the entrance of the cairn eating a once-proud stag, a beast of Eden, crunching bones and all in their teeth. Several others stood close together a short distance away, punching one another with their huge fists in some kind of game or ritual.

  They laughed in gravelly voices and grunted, and Eve almost felt sorry for them. Stupidity and belligerence were their only real sins. They followed Duergar because of his strength and cleverness, because he was both one of them and one of the magical Fey, and to the lumbering trolls this made him a natural leader. They followed him because they feared him, these innocent, idiotic things.

  But they would die just the same. Their savagery came from not knowing any better, but they could not be reasoned with. Only death could stop them.

  And sometimes not even that. For now that she had come closer, Eve saw that the Drows that were sprawled on the ground, those she’d thought were sleeping, were silent and still. They were dead. Their stink as corpses had been no worse than it had been when they were among the living, so she had missed that small fact. Undead Drows, roused, no doubt, by the demon’s infernal power. Those that still lived were up and around. Those that lay inert on the ground were dead and would rise again when they were needed.

  Eden would never be pure again.

  Once again, Eve tested the air and found the scents of her friends even stronger. The soft light of the sky seemed almost not to reach the ground here, but it was nothing like night.

  Still, she could not wait for real darkness. Truly, she could not wait a moment. Another glance told her that, other than the Drows, there were no enemies within sight of the tent.

  She bolted, keeping low to the ground and her tread light as could be. Otherwise, stealth be damned. Eve raced toward the Drows, wondering if the dead would stir. They did not.

  The laughing, muttering trio continued their odd game of punching one another. The two by the door, eating the stag, had begun to pick bone shards from their teeth with filthy fingers.

  As she sprinted for the cairn, they glanced up.

  A figure loomed out of the darkness of that doorway.

  Duergar stood blocking her way, massive axe hanging in silhouette at his side. The white streak in his hair and his green eyes gleamed in the shadowed interior of that stone hut, and a swirl of Fey magic began to crackle around the blade of his axe.

  Eve did not hesitate. She flicked her fingers outward and her talons lengthened even more. Blood sang in her ears, a choir of dead angels. From within the cairn she caught the scent of her friends and comrades even more strongly.

  The dead Drows began to stir.

  One of the two eating the stag smiled at her, and she saw terrible intelligence in its gaze, far greater than any of its ilk ought to have. Its flesh ran like mercury, and it became earth as dry as the soil beneath her feet, and it wore that garment peculiar to ancient Egypt that seemed so much like a skirt.

  The moment she realized that Legion had been waiting for her, Eve knew it was a trap. Of course it was. She’d been so drunk on Jophiel’s blood that it had never occurred to her that Abaddon would have been expecting her.

  And just as his name entered her mind, as if summoned, black wings blotted out Eden’s sky above her. She cursed herself and the Creator and Jophiel and Abaddon and even Conan Doyle for letting the Menagerie get captured when they’d obviously come here to try to help her. Her glorious plan to free her allies and begin a counteroffensive to destroy the putrid creatures who’d tainted Eden unraveled in her mind.

  Only one choice remained to her. Flight. Eve knew this, and yet for an eyeblink she hesitated, hating the idea of running.

  Why not stand and fight and make an end to things? If she could destroy Abaddon, the incursion of rot in Eden might fall apart. But she knew that was no solution. The high she’d gotten from the angel’s blood had made her careless, not stupid. Full of hate and frustration, she made her decision.

  At the last second, the wind blew and a new scent reached her—one with which she was all too familiar. A smile touched her lips. Above her, Abaddon drew a bloodred sword and stared at her in confusion, surprised by her grin.

  Eve veered toward the three idiotic Drows—too foolish to be let in on the plan and only now becoming aware that anything odd was unfolding around them. The dead ones reached for her as they rose, but Eve easily eluded their grasp. The trio of moronic troll-beasts tried to grab at her as well, and Eve leaped into the air, somersaulting between two of them.

  As she flew by their heads she lashed out with her talons, tearing out their throats. The two fell, and the third became tangled with them, roaring in fury.

  “Legion, no!” Eve heard Abaddon shout from the sky above her. “Leave her to me. I’ve waited too long for this. The final depravity.”

  She glanced back only once to see that Duergar had never left the doorway of his cairn-hut. Legion had closed to within a dozen feet of her but now stopped near the carnage of the two Drows she had murdered and the third, still buried beneath them, arms waving.

  Then she sprinted, and once again it felt as though the winds of Eden were aiding her, sweeping her along. Several vampires had emerged and now moved to block her way. Eve only laughed as she sped through them, blood spraying the arid, ruined ground.

  Black wings beat the air above her. She felt the presence of Abaddon as he swept down, closing in on her, as though his shadow coated her with the filth of his hideous purpose.

  “Run, bitch,” the demon sneered, his voice a whisper in her ears, as though he was right beside her. “But I’ll have you again, in ways that will make the last time seem sweet and gentle.”

  He ought to have kept silent. She felt him descend upon her as she reached the perimeter of the encampment, and she dodged his grasp. Abaddon would not get a seco
nd chance.

  Eve entered the Garden, then, and this was her home, the place she walked in her dreams, whether she recalled them or not. She remembered now, though. Every step. Every hill.

  Every stream.

  The demon cried out in rage and dropped to the ground.

  Abaddon could not fly through the tangle of trees and flowering plants that grew nearly as high. Now the veneer of humanity he sometimes wore disappeared. Like a bull, he crashed through the lush Garden, hooves pounding the ground, splintering tree roots, horns breaking branches, slowing him down.

  Eve laughed, knowing it would infuriate him even more.

  “Your friends will die!” Abaddon snarled. “Without your help, they’ll be eviscerated. Their blood will feed the Garden.”

  She kept silent, twisting around trees, running amidst the flowers. Birds screamed and took wing. Animals rushed into the undergrowth in terror. Then Eve arrived at her destination, the stream. She dived in, submerging, and swam with the current. Her body knifed through the water and she knew that Abaddon would have heard the splash, would be hunting her even now.

  When the current diminished, she knew she had reached her goal. Naked, water sluicing off her, she stood up from the stream and stepped out onto the soft bank. Abaddon burst through a screen of tangled plants, ripping orange blossoms and magenta flowers from their stalks. Chest heaving, the demon saw that she had stopped running. In his grin, she could see all the devils of Hell.

  Eve grinned back.

  Abaddon’s gaze tracked upward, finally noticing just where their chase had led him.

  She stood before the Tree of Knowledge, its base surrounded by prickly briar still splashed with the blood of Jophiel.

  “Come on, Abaddon,” Eve said, spreading her arms, letting the light glisten on the droplets of water sliding down her breasts and belly and legs. The fruit hung ripe from the tree, only feet away from her fingers.

  “It’s everything you’ve always wanted.”

  CONAN Doyle lay in the dark on the rough earthen floor inside Duergar’s cairn. The half-Drow, half-Fey warrior had been reminiscing with him and regaling him with tales of what he would do to the mage as soon as Abaddon no longer had need of him. Conan Doyle’s arms and legs were bound with something alive—black, slick things that wormed in and out of his fingers and between his wrists and ankles.

  Whatever these Hellspawn were, they leached the magic from him somehow.

  Far worse was the white, writhing maggot that plugged his mouth, swelling larger anytime he tried to move his tongue or speak past it. He breathed through his nose, trying desperately to keep from suffocating. Abaddon had kept them all as bait for Eve—and perhaps he had some other use for them as well—but Conan Doyle felt sure the demon would not weep if he were to choke to death on the vile, pulsing thing in his mouth.

  He’d had no choice but to sit and listen to Duergar’s mutterings and to endure the half-breed’s sneer. When the monstrous Fey had knelt and run his hands roughly over Ceridwen’s body, cupping her breasts, insinuating themselves inside the silk of her clothing, a murderous rage had filled him like never before. But he could do nothing, and neither could Ceri, who had been trussed up in the same fashion.

  Iron chains bound Jelena, naked save for the wolf skin she wore like a cloak. Yet her sensuality had vanished with her captivity. No dignity remained for her. Not here. The ghost of Dr. Graves had been captured in a strange net that seemed constructed of ectoplasm, and in silent moments, Conan Doyle thought he could hear the net screaming. Somehow, it had been woven in Hell from the souls of the damned. Graves appeared to be unharmed and conscious, but he did not speak, nor would he raise his eyes when addressed.

  Among them all, Clay was the only one who had not woken. He lay as he’d fallen—and been dropped here inside the stone hut—like an ancient statue, upended by vandals.

  Duergar had left them alone in the gloom, only dim light filtering in from outside relieving the darkness. Something transpired beyond the door of the cairn—figures in motion, Duergar holding his axe as though ready for combat—but only when Conan Doyle heard the voice of Abaddon calling out did he realize that Eve had tried to reach them, and the demon now pursued her.

  The irony struck him, but he could not laugh, could not even grin in amusement, with the bulbous maggot squirming in his mouth. He took several deep breaths through his nose and glanced over again to see that Duergar had disappeared from the doorway of the cairn-hut. For the moment, they were alone. Surrounded by enemies, yes, but within those stone walls, they were unobserved.

  Conan Doyle tensed against the bonds that twisted themselves around his wrists and fingers. If he could slip even one hand free . . . but he could not. They tightened whenever he moved. When he tried to contort his fingers to form a sigil or to scratch runes in the dirt, they reacted, jerking his digits into other positions. A quick glance told him Ceridwen had started the same process but had no greater luck than he. She ought to have been able to summon ice or fire from the air or roots from the ground to do her bidding. Conan Doyle had deduced that this tainted ground—the part of Eden soiled by the presence of demons—had simply been killed. All the elemental spirits that had been here had been destroyed or driven out. And the eel-like things that bound him and Ceridwen both, sapping their magic, prevented her from drawing the elements to her from elsewhere in Eden.

  He began to wonder what would happen if he bit into the maggot in his mouth. Its blood and other fluids would spill down his throat, and he would likely vomit. Coughing would not eject the intruding creature, but perhaps he could regurgitate it, if its blood did not poison or taint him forever and if it did not use the opportunity to thrust itself down his open throat, clogging his airways entirely.

  All of this crossed his mind in seconds. The risk seemed foolish, but under the circumstances, he felt he had little other choice.

  Then a frown furrowed his brow. Conan Doyle blinked.

  He felt a presence in the cairn-hut with them and a breeze that did not come from the open doorway. His nose wrinkled with the scent of wet dog, and he heard heavy breathing.

  “Wow, you guys are totally screwed, huh?”

  Had he been able to do so, at that moment Conan Doyle would have cheered. He twisted his head to get a better view of the door. In the shadow of the stones that made up the arched doorway stood a small, misshapen figure, bedecked with weapons. Squire came toward him, and Conan Doyle saw motion behind him. A moment later, Danny Ferrick stepped out of the darkness similarly armed and followed by the shadow hound, Shuck.

  Danny’s arms were full of swords, daggers, axes, and a shotgun-style weapon Conan Doyle had never seen before.

  Its short barrel had a wide mouth that made the mage think of an old-fashioned blunderbuss.

  Squire unsheathed a dagger that caught the glint of the light from the door. A Gemini Blade, Conan Doyle felt sure, made of the hobgoblin’s own metal alloy combining iron and silver. It would kill vampires, Fey, and Drow alike . . . and the demons wouldn’t enjoy the kiss of one of those blades either.

  “Enough of this lying around shit, boss,” Squire muttered, a grin on his face. He sliced the wormlike Hellspawn from Conan Doyle’s legs, then from his wrists.

  “Oh, and by the way . . . big fuckin’ raise. I’m just saying.”

  As Danny raced over to do the same for Ceridwen, Conan Doyle raised both hands, his fingers surrounded now by bluetinted fire that crackled in the darkness. He started to reach for his mouth, for his throat, then changed his mind.

  Narrowing his eyes he turned away from Squire and the others and a gout of cobalt blue magic shot from his mouth, disintegrating the maggot the demon had placed there.

  He glanced over at Ceridwen in time to see her rise, the thing in her mouth spilling out in shards of shattered ice.

  Her violet eyes gleamed, and a cold wind eddied around her. Icy mist formed around one fist and pure fire around the other. Her powers were weakened on this spot, but not
gone.

  “I want to kill them all,” she said.

  Conan Doyle reached out a hand to her, and his magic touched elemental sorcery. He nodded.

  “Excellent plan. Simple. I like it.”

  Shuck had trotted over and closed his jaws on the net of souls that held Dr. Graves. The shadow beast dragged the net away, and, for the first time since their captivity, the ghost met Conan Doyle’s gaze. His spectral translucent form shimmered in the dark and twin holsters appeared, one under each arm. He drew his phantom guns and nodded without speaking.

  Conan Doyle gestured toward Jelena. Her iron chains fell away, clanking to the ground. Her eyes narrowed with such ferocity that it overshadowed her nudity. Danny didn’t fail to notice, however. He stared at her breasts and gently sloping belly the way only a teenaged boy ever could, entranced.

  Jelena drew the wolf skin tightly around her, pulled it over her head, and dropped to the ground on all fours. When she looked up at him, her golden eyes were the she-wolf’s once more.

  Ceridwen chose weapons from the pile Danny had left on the ground. Conan Doyle did the same. Their magic ought to be enough, but against an army, an arsenal could only help.

  He reached for the blunderbuss.

  “Ah-ah, I don’t think so,” Squire said. The hobgoblin grabbed the big-mouthed gun. “That one’s for me.”

  Only Clay remained.

  “What’s up with him?” Danny asked, staring down at the shapeshifter, not so interested in Jelena now that she was no longer a naked woman.

  “He’s sleeping.”

  Conan Doyle knelt beside Clay, fearful that his answer was woefully inadequate. If the creature they’d seen—Legion—really was Clay’s brother somehow, there was no telling what sort of trauma their contact had caused. He held up a hand and summoned a light, which shone down on Clay’s immobile face. Some of the dry, cracked earth that made up his forehead had altered its color, and there were ridges that had not been there before. It looked almost as though something was attached to Clay’s face.