The Red Winter

by Henry H. Neff

  The being lifted his chin defiantly. Cooper felt a glimmer of hope, for it was an unmistakably human gesture—a gesture strongly characteristic of the Max he knew.

  All at once, the Workshop soldiers laid down their weapons. They did so in perfect unison, as though executing a drill. Max’s eyes never left Varga’s. Hoisting up their injured comrade, the soldiers retreated swiftly through the archway.

  Cooper stared at the guns upon the floor. Why had Max bothered to disarm them? Those weapons couldn’t hurt him …

  They could hurt us.

  Was Max protecting them? Whether he had spared their lives and the soldiers out of compassion or merely to defy Peter’s visions did not matter. Hazel’s instincts had been right; there was still a glimmer of the old Max—their Max—within that inhuman juggernaut.

  Turning away from them, Max lifted the gae bolga and cut through the steel door set within the glass that encased the pipes and tubes. The blade pierced the material so easily that carving an opening was like drawing an outline with chalk. Pushing the heavy section inward, Max stepped across the threshold and made for one of the largest steel pipes. Cooper and the others followed.

  They kept back ten feet or so as Max cut a sizable opening in the pipe’s side and kicked it inward. Cold air billowed out, forced from above. Evidently, the pipe was an enormous airshaft. Without the slightest hesitation, Max stepped through the opening and plunged from view.

  Cooper glanced at the others. “Can you two levitate?”

  Varga nodded. Hazel looked incredulous: Of course a Promethean Scholar can levitate!

  “Well, then,” said Cooper. Without further ado, he took three quick steps and dove through the pitch-dark opening.

  He let himself free fall. He felt his body accelerating, the air rushing past as he plummeted in the blackness. As he approached terminal velocity, the sense of movement diminished, replaced by a surreal feeling of weightlessness—as though he were floating and not falling hundreds of feet per second. Far below, he could see Max and the gae bolga, two receding lights reflecting on the pipe’s interior. The spectacle was strangely beautiful, but Cooper was a pragmatist. The airshaft had no lights or floor markers—no way of gauging where they were. How far had they fallen? Half a mile? More? Would Max know when to stop? Three seconds later, he had his answer.

  Clang!

  The noise rang from far below, like a sledgehammer striking a spike. It must have been Max, for his radiance was no longer receding but growing larger as Cooper plunged soundlessly toward it. He appeared to be clinging to the pipe’s wall as easily as a gecko. Sparks flashed as Max plunged the gae bolga’s blade through the pipe wall. A dim beam of light pierced the darkness. It widened as Max cut an opening and slipped through.

  Cooper made for the light, now controlling his plunge with subtle applications of mystic energy. The pipe was wide enough that he did not have to expend much, just enough to slow his descent and shape a trajectory that would bring him through the opening. Banking slightly, he twisted like a skydiver, angling his body and adjusting his speed. Catching hold of the opening’s rim, he swung himself through and landed nimbly on his feet.

  He found himself in a dim cavern of dark, rough-hewn rock. While this room was considerably smaller and less finished than the one they had just left, the basic layout was similar, a central cluster of pipes and tubes surrounded by unattended control terminals. Thirty feet away, an instrument panel was blinking, illuminating veins of quartz and copper in the walls.

  Straight ahead, Max was climbing a metal stairway that connected the sunken floor with a walkway leading to a steel fire door set within the rock wall. Above that door, a small surveillance camera was silently panning across the room. A voice hissed behind Cooper.

  “Help me through!”

  He turned to see Hazel hovering weightlessly inside the airshaft. Reaching within, Cooper took her hand and tugged her inside the cavern as though she were a balloon. She kicked her legs in the empty air until they settled on solid ground. Varga slipped in quietly after her and landed with practiced ease. Cooper was not entirely surprised. Before his injuries, Peter Varga had been a capable field Agent.

  Upon the walkway, Max opened the fire door and left the room. The three followed at a distance as the shimmering youth strode down dark, rough passageways hollowed from solid rock. No one at the Workshop actually lived this deep; these areas were reserved for mining and for experiments too disruptive or hazardous for the occupied levels.

  Despite its winding ways, Max seemed to know precisely where he was going. As he walked, his aura gleamed on girders and turbines, mine cars and rail tracks. And that aura was growing brighter.

  Varga grunted, his cane rapping steadily on the rock. “My soul is close. I can feel it. The demon will not be far.”

  “And what do we intend to do when we get there?” said Hazel.

  Cooper was going to reply when a confused but familiar baritone cried out from Hazel’s jacket. “Where the hell am I? Am I dead?”

  A tapered, yamlike head peeked out from the jacket’s front pocket. Hazel nearly kissed it. “Toby! I’m so relieved to see you conscious. How are you feeling?”

  “Groggy,” he sniffed. “And out of the loop. Why are you whispering, eh? What’s going on? I demand an update!”

  Cooper’s update was terse. “Scathach is dead, Max has snapped, and we’re closing in on Prusias.”

  The smee sank out of sight.

  Cooper turned to the others. “Listen, when we reach—”

  “I think we’re there,” Varga breathed.

  They paused on the threshold of a larger cavern served by a pod bank and littered with cargo vehicles and excavation equipment. Across the way, Max stood before a broad ramp that led up to a blast door some fifty feet in diameter. Apparently the Workshop had expanded Bram’s Chamber by a considerable margin. Cooper saw its former door mounted above the new entrance like an ornament or trophy, a circular slab of greenish stone inscribed with an image of the Egyptian god Thoth.

  “For a secret bunker, it’s not exactly subtle,” remarked Hazel.

  “I think it’s safe to say the bunker has been designed to accommodate Prusias’s true form,” said Varga. “Why else would it need a door that size?”

  Cooper had never seen the demon’s true form. While he’d been present during the battle at Rowan when the Great Red Dragon rose up from the sea, he’d also been possessed. The only thing he could recall with any certainty was thousands of horrified cries when the demon’s heads reared into view from beneath the cliffs. While everyone agreed the monster had seven heads—seven bearded heads with blank, ravenous eyes—people disagreed about the monster’s scale. Some swore the demon was a thousand feet long. Others insisted he was even bigger, that his body could circle all of Old College.

  And now we’ve got him cornered. Lucky us.

  Just as Max stepped upon the ramp, floodlights in the cavern wall blazed on, spotlighting him with their powerful beams. He stared into their dazzling brilliance as though he wanted the cameras and watchers to see precisely who was at their door.

  Crouching low, Cooper and his companions scurried to a more sheltered vantage from behind a rock formation. As they did so, dozens of heavy, gleaming cannons slid forward from recesses around the blast door, their barrels trained on Max.

  When he stepped forward, they fired.

  The barrage was deafening, a hail of bullets and crackling plasma beams that appeared to obliterate the ramp and nearby vehicles. Billowing plumes of smoke and dust roiled about the cavern floor, obscuring everything but a pale light at their center, a sun half veiled by storm clouds.

  The firing stopped, the smoke dissipated, and Cooper saw Max standing atop the rubble of the pulverized ramp. He had barely moved. Staring up at the spotlights, the boy raised the gae bolga high.

  Lightning erupted from its blade, snaking, forking, seeking, finding. Nothing escaped it; nothing was spared. Every spotlight and camera, cannon and
gun exploded or split, warped and melted. When they lay in bubbling ruin, Max advanced toward the gleaming door.

  Once he was close enough, he reared back and plunged the gae bolga three feet deep into the massive door. The gae bolga screamed as it pierced the metal, an otherworldly cry that could only have come from the Morrígan herself. Max left the spear anchored there, poised and quivering, as he backed away.

  “What’s happening?” hissed Hazel.

  Cooper had no idea, but Varga was leaning forward, his spectral eye fixed upon the door. “I have never seen anything like this,” he breathed. “The door is … dying.”

  Even as he said the word, great fissures and cracks appeared in the metal. Its gleaming surface grew dull, darkening until it was the shade of rusted iron.

  A blood-chilling moan filled the cavern, greedy and almost sensual.

  All at once, the door’s material became a dark powder, like charcoal or graphite. It collapsed in a single sheet, the grains streaming about the gae bolga as it remained fixed in midair. Walking forward, Max grasped the spear as he passed and strode down what looked to be a lighted tunnel.

  An astonished Hazel turned to her companions.

  “Do we go after him?”

  Cooper’s reply was automatic. “Of course. We have a mission.”

  His wife placed her hand over his and gave him a probing look. “William, do you believe our contributions will make one iota of difference?”

  The prospect of abandoning a mission was antithetical to Cooper’s code, but Hazel spoke the truth. He questioned very much whether they could tip the scales in the coming conflict. Before he could answer, however, Varga rose.

  “I must go on,” he said, wiping dried blood from his chin. “Prusias has my soul and countless others in his keeping. It’s my duty to recover them.” Varga gave an understanding smile. “I do not ask the two of you to join me. This is my mission, not yours. And you have other considerations.”

  He gestured at Hazel’s belly.

  She straightened abruptly. “Absolutely not,” she said decisively. “You must forgive me, Peter. In all the excitement, I’d quite forgotten about your objective. We may not have much to offer Max, but we can certainly help you.”

  A groan sounded from her pocket.

  From the tunnel’s mouth came a rumble like distant thunder. Cooper unsheathed his kris and thumbed its wavy edge. “Come on,” he said, rising and setting off across the cavern.

  The others followed after him but could not move nearly as quickly. Leaping over the ramp’s remains, he dashed inside the tunnel, his boots making little sound as they struck its metal floor. The tunnel went straight for about a hundred yards before arcing left. Ahead, he could see the shadows of running figures approaching. With an Amplified leap, he sprang fifty feet up and clung, upside down, to the tunnel’s roof.

  The figures soon came into view, a collection of laborers, engineers, and minor demons clutching musical instruments or wearing courtesan’s robes. It was a virtual stampede of slaves fleeing the imminent confrontation. Dropping from the ceiling, Cooper ignored their startled cries and continued up the tunnel.

  Upon rounding the bend, he saw that Max was walking straight ahead, a solitary figure within a halo of crackling white light. Cooper closed the distance until he’d come within thirty feet. A hundred yards ahead, the tunnel opened onto a dim space where dark, sinuous shapes were gliding through the air.

  The tunnel trembled suddenly, as though something enormous was moving about in the chamber ahead. A taunting voice rang out like thunder.

  “Come on, you miserable whelp! Come finish what you started!”

  Upon hearing the voice, Max broke into a trot and then a run. Cooper tried to keep up, but the boy was pulling swiftly away, sprinting with superhuman speed toward the tunnel mouth. When he reached it, he gave a howl and sprang up out of sight. Willing himself forward, Cooper reached the tunnel’s conclusion and gazed up.

  High above, a furious midair battle was taking place in a domed chamber the size of an aircraft hangar. At first glance, it looked like huge black moths were swarming about a shimmering white star. But the moths were hundreds of airborne malakhim packed together so tightly that the star’s light was being smothered. As more malakhim joined the swarm, it became increasingly dense and spherical. The chamber gradually dimmed as the star was buried in their midst.

  Cooper ducked when a black-robed figure glided swiftly past the tunnel entrance. Its obsidian mask portrayed an angelic face whose serene beauty contrasted sharply with its eager rush to join the others. Cooper had never seen malakhim fly or appear in such numbers. Max was trapped within a throng of fiends so densely packed, not even his light could escape anymore. He wouldn’t be able to breathe, much less swing a weapon.

  Gloating laughter rang out. It echoed from an opening in the opposite wall, an opening so large that it dwarfed Cooper’s tunnel. Its impenetrable depths exuded a malevolence that was almost tangible. An honor guard of red-masked malakhim stood before the opening like tiny toy soldiers, their hands clasped atop greatswords.

  “Take his blade!” the voice commanded. “He is nothing without his blade!”

  Above, the grotesque swarming reached greater intensity, like honeybees clustering madly about a queen. Pieces of malakhim fell like rotten fruit—arms and legs, obsidian masks, entire bodies cut in two. But these casualties were few among a tireless press of hundreds. A moment later, the gae bolga had been wrenched from its owner’s hand and flung out of the living swarm.

  The spear’s glow faded as it fell, tumbling end over end until its blade impaled the stone floor. And there it stood, upright and quivering, a second Excalibur. A gasp sounded behind Cooper. He turned to see Hazel’s bloodless face. Varga crouched beside her, sweating and breathless.

  “We have to help him,” Hazel panted. “We have to try something!”

  Cooper nodded. He was already reaching for his last vial of blood petals. The substance would be useless against Prusias, for the most powerful demons had habituated themselves to its effects. But Cooper had just seen it work very potently against malakhim.

  “Inscribe a circle,” he muttered. “The strongest you can make.”

  Varga shook his head. “Those won’t work against Prusias unless he’s been summoned.”

  “It’s for the malakhim. Quick now!”

  Using oil from one of Hazel’s flasks, the pair worked swiftly to trace a large circle in a radius around them. While neither had deep experience with summoning, every Rowan graduate learned protections against evil spirits. The most powerful were unique to specific entities, but there were others that, while less potent, had broader applications.

  While they were busy, Cooper rummaged through his pack, praying that what he needed was unbroken. His quickly found it wrapped in several shirts—the bottle of scent Hazel had given him as a wedding present. Yanking out the stopper, he dumped its contents and refilled it with the crimson concoction from his flask. Behind him, Hazel gave an indignant grunt.

  Rotating the egg-shaped bottle in one hand, Cooper rapped its surface with the blade of his dagger. Tiny cracks appeared in the glass, weakening the bottle without breaking it.

  “Bring me the Hound!” roared the hidden speaker. “I want to taste his flesh, his fire, his soul!”

  The roiling ball of malakhim began drifting toward the dark tunnel. It did not move easily, but listed and dipped as though trying to transport something very heavy. Now and again, the sphere shook with so much violence that slender beams of light managed to escape. Deep within the sphere’s core, a furious struggle was still taking place. Five hundred malakhim could barely contain this ball of living, raging fire. Cooper weighed the glass bottle in his hand. Perhaps they could tip the scales …

  He checked on Hazel and Varga’s progress. The two were on their hands and knees, working toward each other as they inscribed sigils just within the circle’s border. Hazel was scribbling furiously, whispering incantations.
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br />   “Ready?” Cooper asked.

  “Not yet,” muttered a sweating Varga. “Twenty seconds.”

  Cooper glanced up. The malakhim had dragged their prisoner within a hundred yards of that yawning crevice. In its shadows, something stirred and thrust smoothly forward so that Cooper could just make out its features.

  It was a grinning face the size of a house.

  Cooper crossed himself. “Sorry, Varga. Time’s up.”

  Dashing out from the tunnel, Cooper ran across the vast chamber until he came within range of the hellish sphere. Cocking his arm, he hurled the glass grenade with all his might and followed its swift, glittering arc.

  The bottle smashed into the sphere’s lower quarter, exploding in a cloud of red mist that ignited like flash powder. Its fireball destroyed every malakhim it touched, leaving behind a crater, a weakness the swarm’s captive was quick to exploit.

  Light burst through, shattering the malakhim’s hold with a force that sent them flying like shrapnel. The shock wave also blew Cooper back, tumbling him head over heels while obsidian masks rained down like volcanic debris. As Max landed in a crouch on the chamber floor, Cooper scrambled to his feet and limped for the tunnel. Seconds later, he spied a dozen wraithlike shadows converging swiftly upon his.

  Just ahead were Hazel and Varga. They were shouting at him, imploring him to hurry. But Cooper kept his eyes on the closing shadows. They were almost upon him … one stretched out a hand to seize him.

  With an Amplified burst, Cooper slipped beyond its reach. Taking a running leap, he soared like a long jumper and crashed into Varga. Twisting around, he saw the malakhim skimming low over the ground, racing toward them. Just before they reached the group, the circle burst into bright flames, unveiling ancient wards traced within. The malakhim swerved sharply like a flock of starlings. Circling around, they abandoned this lesser prey and doubled back to assist their master.

  “What’s happening?” hissed Toby from Hazel’s pocket.