It Happened One Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  “No. If we get back to the shop. At this rate, that could be, like, never. Real soon, that thing inside him is going to take over completely. And when it does, he could kill you. And if you’re in his arms, it wouldn’t be too hard.”

  Dru wanted to argue with Rane. But everything she could think of just sounded like an excuse. Deep down, she knew Rane had a point.

  Rane moved to put her hands on Dru’s shoulders, but Dru stepped back, out of reach. For a split second, Rane looked hurt. “I’m just telling you, D, because you’re my best friend. And the last thing I want, when it all hits the fan, is for you to have your head on crooked because you think he’s such hot stuff. I want you to be ready.”

  Seething anger boiled up under Dru’s skin. “Ready for what?” she asked, biting off the words.

  Rane gave her a long, stern look before she answered. “Look, as the demon takes over, he’s going to get destructive, out of control. Dangerous to everyone around him, including you and me. When that happens—not if, when—then someone has to stop him. Permanently.”

  Dru turned away, not believing she was hearing this.

  “That’s what I do, D. That’s my existence. I take down the forces of evil before they kill people. And what sucks is that I know you’re falling for this guy. And I don’t want to do this.” Rane took a deep breath and blew it out. “But if I have to, I will.”

  Dru shook her head in denial. She could still save Greyson.

  She knew it.

  Couldn’t she?

  29

  THE ONLY EVIL YOU CAN TRUST

  They caught up to Greyson a few minutes later. But at his questioning look, Dru just shook her head. No one spoke.

  An open cave waited beyond the end of the causeway, its wide mouth a pool of impenetrable darkness. As they approached it, Rane rolled her shoulders and popped her neck, obviously itching for a fight.

  Dru glanced over at Greyson, who squinted apprehensively into the cave, his red eyes glowing.

  “See anything in there?” Dru asked him, breaking the silence.

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t like this.”

  “Agreed. You’re not the only one getting the heebie-jeebies here.”

  “I don’t know about heebie-jeebies,” he growled. “I just don’t like it.”

  Dru pulled the still-glowing vivianite out of her purse and held it before her like a candle. Warily, she stepped off the causeway onto the uneven black ground. When they reached the cave opening, she leaned one hand against the rough stone. “Well, it doesn’t look like anything—”

  Before she could finish, a powerful wind swept out of the cave, buffeting her. The vivianite flashed with inner radiance, and an even brighter light flared from the cave.

  A sudden sensation of movement tugged at her, threatening to pull her off her feet. Magic shuddered through the blinding light around her, trying to take them somewhere else, deeper into the netherworld. Somewhere vast, ethereal, terrifying.

  Her first impulse was to back away, but the magic was too strong. If she couldn’t resist it, she realized, then she had to control it somehow.

  Take us home, she thought. But without any chance to prepare, she had no idea how to get control of the magic that assaulted them.

  “D!” Rane shouted over the wind. “Do something!”

  Instinctively, Dru reached out for Greyson. He swept her up with one arm, holding her close as the brilliant light and wind blasted over them.

  “I’ve got you,” he said in her ear. The howling wind nearly drowned out his voice, but his touch was enough.

  Instead of fighting the vortex of magic trying to pull them into the cave, Dru cleared her mind and focused her thoughts on where she wanted to go. Not deeper into the netherworld, but back to The Crystal Connection. Back to Denver, or even to the Rocky Mountains that overlooked the city. Back to someplace safe.

  Take us home.

  The rushing energy threatened to blot out her thoughts. It pulled at her hair, plucked at her clothes. A dizzying sense of movement swirled around her. She blinked away tears, able to see nothing beyond the blazing bright energy.

  Take us home!

  The vivianite grew warmer in her hand. The more she focused on going home, the hotter it became, until it burned brighter than the energy whirling around them. Caught in the currents of magic, she fought for control, and the resistance gradually melted away. A rushing sound filled Dru’s ears, painfully loud.

  Without warning, the brilliant magic released them, leaving them in darkness. Dru sagged against Greyson, blinking in a futile attempt to get rid of the spots in her vision.

  In the thick silence left behind by the dying wind, Rane said, “So you guys still with me?”

  “Yes,” Dru and Greyson said in unison.

  “Good.” Rane pushed past them in the dark. Something thumped, hollow. “Huh. Some kind of wall up ahead. Wood, feels like.”

  “Okay.” Dru tried to find her bearings. “Before we break anything, let’s find out if—”

  The sharp crack of splintering wood interrupted her. A jagged beam of light illuminated Rane and her fists as she smashed her way through into daylight.

  “Or, we could just break things,” Dru muttered.

  Rane tore open a section of wood-plank wall and stepped through into sunlight, exposing a faded metal sign fastened by rusted nails to a wooden barrier that had been weathered silver by the elements. A skull and crossbones leered from the center of the sign, surrounded by block letters:

  STAY OUT! STAY ALIVE! ABANDONED MINES ARE DEADLY!

  Dru was still trying to puzzle that out as Greyson ducked through the broken lumber and nodded to her.

  Past the sign lay a wide tunnel sloping gently uphill, toward the scent of pine trees. The dry dirt underfoot was littered with loose rocks and pine needles.

  Greyson helped Dru up the slope, and they emerged into daylight, surrounded by brown rocks and dense trees.

  Blinking, Dru turned and looked back the way they’d come. An abandoned mine entrance gaped open behind them, but the dark shaft beyond descended away into the blackness, much farther than they had walked from the cave.

  With a grinding sound, Rane turned human again. “Looks like the Rocky Mountains, all right. Did you do this?”

  Dru shielded her eyes and took in the mountain landscape around them: endless ranks of pine trees, broken by jumbles of granite boulders and dry ground scattered with wildflowers. “I was trying for Denver, but hey, not bad, right?”

  Rane looked around at the pristine mountain wilderness and shrugged. “I guess. If you don’t mind more walking.”

  “Ugh.” Wincing in pain, Dru pulled one shoe off her tender heel. She sucked in a breath at the blister underneath, practically big enough to have a life of its own. She sat down on a nearby boulder and fished Band-Aids out of her purse, but Greyson took them from her.

  “Let me.” He knelt and gently lifted one of her ankles, then formed a makeshift bandage out of folded-up Starbucks napkins, using the Band-Aids to stick them in place.

  Dru watched him work with a mixture of embarrassment and warm gratitude. “Guess I could’ve picked better shoes for this trip.”

  He smiled. She tried to ignore the fact that he still wasn’t wearing a shirt beneath his leather jacket, but she was in precisely the wrong position to look away.

  He finished bandaging her other ankle, waited for her to get her shoes on, then pulled her to her feet.

  “Thanks.” A sudden head rush made her feel a little dizzy, and she leaned against him for a moment.

  He put a steadying hand on her back. Nothing more than that, but she was intensely aware of his touch.

  Slowly, she lifted her gaze until she was looking up into his eyes. This close, their red glow sent a shiver down her spine. In the back of her mind, a little alarm bell went off. It would have been easy to blot it out, and she was strongly tempted to.

  But she couldn’t.

  “Hey, hello?” Rane
glared at Greyson’s back. “Finished with your emergency pedicure yet?”

  Dru backed away from Greyson, avoiding his eyes. “We should go.”

  Rane shot her a warning glare, which Dru pretended not to see. She pointed downhill, toward a clear-cut strip through the pine trees. “That could be something.”

  They set off and soon found an old gravel trail that had once been a dirt road, now overgrown with hardy grass and cactuses. It switched back and forth down the steep slope.

  Once they broke out of the trees, Dru realized something wasn’t quite right about the sunlight. It had an unsettling fiery quality, somewhere between a bloody red sunset and the ominous greenish-yellow sky that preceded a tornado. The wind picked up, carrying a harsh mineral scent, like rotten eggs.

  Rane wrinkled her nose. “What the hell is that?”

  “Hell. Literally.” At her baffled look, Dru explained. “Sulfur. You know, fire and brimstone? Hell on earth? The end of days? Guess this is what it smells like.”

  “Long as it’s not me,” Rane muttered, checking her armpits.

  “We need to get back to the shop.” Dru turned to Greyson. “The other Horsemen are loose in the world, so it would make sense that the world is reacting to their presence. And I’m betting this is only going to get worse until we can cure you.”

  He seemed distracted by something, but he nodded.

  The trail finally ended at the weathered blacktop of a two-lane road, divided down the center by a broken yellow line, fringed on both sides by gravel. An old metal sign identified it as a Colorado state highway.

  That lone proof of civilization made Dru crack a thankful smile. She almost sank to her knees in relief, and probably would have if Rane hadn’t thrown an arm around her shoulders and shook her in triumph.

  Greyson just frowned.

  “Oh, lighten up,” Rane said to him. “Aren’t you glad to be back?”

  Greyson’s eyebrows furrowed. “Something’s coming,” he said quietly and lifted his gaze to the top of the next rise, where the blacktop road vanished over a crest.

  Dru was about to ask him what he meant when she heard it, too. A motor, deep and distant but drawing closer.

  It grew in volume, throaty and aggressive. Greyson bent his head down and blinked, as if trying to clear his eyes.

  Dru put one hand on his arm, leaning close. “Are you okay?”

  He gave her a haunted look, then quickly turned away. But not before she saw that the red glow in his eyes was brighter than ever. “There’s a buzzing in my head. Getting louder.”

  A prickly hot wind swept down the road toward them, whispering through the pine trees, picking up bits of grit that pelted bare skin.

  Dru turned to face into the wind. She stepped away from Greyson, gaze focused on the empty road at the top of the hill. She reached into her purse for the familiar cube of galena. When Rane saw her do that, she raised her own fist, ready to transform back into rock.

  The engine noise peaked as a black car rose over the crest of the road, hurtling toward them. The thudding of its engine sounded less like a car motor and more like a mob of caged demons trying to pound their way out through the metal.

  Rane tightened her fist around her ring, and with a grinding sound her body turned to solid flint. “You two get back. I’ll cover you.”

  Dru put a cautioning hand on Rane’s arm, slowly stepping uphill past her. “It doesn’t make any sense. How could the Horsemen get here so fast?”

  “Hell, we got here this fast. Maybe they’ve got some kind of trick door, too.”

  The car swooped toward them, a wedge of impenetrable blackness streaking down the asphalt.

  “But think about the Horsemen that chased us,” Dru said. “There was the red Mustang, a white truck, and a silver car. This isn’t one of them.”

  “No,” Greyson said behind them, his voice a husky whisper. “It’s Hellbringer.”

  Dru glanced over her shoulder at him, but he looked as surprised as she was.

  Rane scowled. “I thought you zapped that thing into oblivion with the magic circle?”

  “Apparently, the circle expired.”

  The long black wedge shape, with its tall spoiler wing rising up in back, bore down on them. Just when Dru feared it would try to run them down, the car locked up its brakes. The tires howled as the car swung around, scribing black half circles of rubber across the pavement, like smoking claw marks.

  Hellbringer came to a full stop across the pavement before them. Its engine barked twice, then settled down into a sinister growl.

  No one sat in the driver’s seat. It had come on its own.

  Like a warhorse of the apocalypse, Dru thought. Smart enough to come to its rider. Mean enough to fight on its own.

  For a moment, nobody moved.

  Greyson slowly approached the car, his boots noiseless on the asphalt. When he was still several yards away, the driver’s door swung open, waiting for him. The engine revved, pounding out exhaust notes that thudded through Dru’s rib cage.

  Beside her, Rane muttered, “Oh, hell no. I’d rather walk.”

  Dru tried to weigh the apprehension pulsing inside her against their other options, then realized she couldn’t come up with any.

  That thing was created to be evil, no doubt about it. It was a demon, an instrument of the apocalypse. And it had already tried to kill Rane once.

  But now it seemed to be responding to Greyson, and somehow it had come to find them when they needed it most. Could Hellbringer be trusted?

  “D? We are so not doing this. I don’t care if we have to walk back to town. Tell me we are not getting in that car.”

  “Do you want to save the world?” Dru said.

  Rane just grunted.

  Greyson looked back over his shoulder at them, his eyes a fierce red. “So. You ladies want a ride?”

  Dru and Rane traded glances.

  After a tense moment, Rane blew out her breath and groaned. “Seriously?”

  30

  HEART OF THE BEAST

  Dru was terrified. Being strapped into the front passenger seat of Hellbringer was like being loaded into a cannon and fired out of the pit of Dante’s Inferno.

  The roar of the engine shook her entire body, reverberating not just in her eardrums but up through her lungs as well. It was a deep, all-encompassing power like nothing she had ever experienced before. She couldn’t just blot it out. It swept right through her, undeniable, unstoppable.

  The black car assaulted her with its very presence. Its cavernous yet oddly claustrophobic interior made her feel as if it was trying to swallow her whole. Black surfaces boxed her in, and the short windows seemed to let in as little light as possible. The air inside the car smelled of age, not unlike an old library, overlaid with a dense smokiness she remembered from childhood road trips.

  The acceleration crushed her back into the seat. Each bend in the road jammed her against the hard door panel on her right or the edge of the console on her left. Since the front seat only sported a lap belt, without any shoulder strap, it didn’t do much to hold her in place.

  She braced herself the best she could, knuckles white, and raised her voice to be heard over the oppressive motor. “There aren’t any airbags in this thing, are there?”

  Greyson, grinning, pulled a spare pair of sunglasses from the visor and slipped them on. “If they still built cars as solid as this, we wouldn’t need airbags.”

  Dru decided not to debate the logic in that statement.

  After a few miles, Dru relaxed her grip on the armrest and tried to take some deep breaths. Despite the insanely fast speed they were traveling, Hellbringer moved in a sure way that felt practically alive, curling into the turns like a lithe animal.

  Soon, she found that she could anticipate the movements and correspondingly tilt her weight one way or another to stay planted in the seat. It was more like being an active rider than a passive passenger. In other circumstances, it could have been exhilarating, but right
now it was simply exhausting.

  Something about that thought nagged at her. In all her years of research on demons, she had studied reports on hundreds of different varieties. And although none of her books ever made specific references to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, she had read more than one account of supernatural beings riding demonic mounts.

  Some mounts were trained to destroy their enemies in battle. Some were chosen for their loyalty to a particular force of darkness. A few, she was sure, were selected simply to terrorize their foes. But one thing Hellbringer clearly excelled at was speed.

  Dru glanced over at Greyson, his glowing red eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, then turned around to Rane, who sat in the back seat with arms petulantly folded across her chest.

  “I think I know what this thing is,” Dru said over the engine noise. Rane leaned forward, one ear cocked, and Dru repeated herself, louder.

  “It’s going to kill us, is what it is,” Rane said. “Come on, you saw Christine, right? This thing could just go ahead and flip over, crash into a wall, catch on fire, do whatever. And what does it care? It can heal itself. And dump our dead bodies on the side of the road.”

  Dru stared at her in horror, struck speechless.

  Rane nodded. “Tell me you’re not thinking the same thing, right?”

  Actually none of those thoughts had occurred to Dru at all. She decided it would be a good time to change topics. “Listen, I have an idea. The Four Horsemen are supposed to ride all around the entire world, bringing the apocalypse. To do that, they’d want to move fast, right? Demonically fast.”

  “I guess. Why?”

  “Well, what if Hellbringer is a speed demon?”

  “That’s a thing?”

  Dru nodded. “Not just a figure of speech.”

  “Still, going around the entire world?” Rane looked skeptical. “First off, the world is really freaking gi-normous, so you’d have to go like NASA speed to circle around it in a day. Second, what about all the oceans? You can’t drive across water.”

  “Maybe this thing can.” Dru shrugged, wondering. “But that’s not the point. The point is, if it really is a speed demon, I might know how to destroy it.”