Hell Breaker

by William Massa

  Talk about irony. While Raven and Cyon continued to work around the clock to find a way here, she’d accidentally ended up in dimension of fear. A realm from which there was no escape. Well, at least under normal circumstances. According to the woman leading the way, the living could escape this place. The mysterious subway would make another stop in the coming twenty-four hours if it stuck to its earlier schedule, and Archer could conceivably hitch a ride home the same way Parker Wang had.

  It sounded too easy to be true.

  The train confounded her in more ways than one. What sort of magic allowed a subway to shuttle between worlds? Who had set it in motion? And what did they hope to gain from it? She wished she could call on Raven for advice; he was the real expert when it came to all this supernatural weirdness.

  She sighed, overwhelmed by it all. Christ, this was definitely above her pay grade. Her stomach rumbled. She was starving. God, what she would give for a meal.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself! Focus on the goal. The mission.

  “How much further do we have to go?” Archer asked.

  “It won’t be much longer,” the woman replied.

  Archer realized the damned soul had never revealed her name. Had she perhaps forgotten it after the spooks fed on her memories? The possibility gave Archer the creeps. Strange burn marks lined the woman’s arms and neck. How many times had the robed demons cornered this poor woman and feasted on her most treasured moments?

  Better not to think about it too much.

  Her mind shifted to another question. “What happened to the other living people who ended up in this place?”

  The woman paused and shook her head. “Only Parker escaped,” she said.

  Archer bit back a curse. She clearly saw the missing people’s faces in her mind’s eye. None of them had deserved such a terrible fate.

  Archer took a deep breath and forced her anger deep down. She needed to stay focused on the path ahead, on getting home.

  “How can I find your daughter once I’m back on Earth?”

  The woman paused and turned, her eyes daggering into Archer. The green glowing sewage water added a layer of intensity to the woman’s unflinching gaze.

  “Her name…?”

  She paused, clearly struggling to recall her daughter’s name, and Archer’s heart broke for the woman. Suddenly she didn’t care what this woman had done while alive. No one deserved such a horrible punishment. She couldn’t stop thinking about her Aunt Michelle, who’d succumbed to Alzheimer’s two years earlier. Aunt Michelle had sported a nearly identical expression, part confusion, part terror at her inability to remember the pertinent details of her life.

  The woman’s eyes darted back and forth, her brows furrowed in concentration. “Her name is…Dianna McKendry, yes… I used to call her my Wonder Girl.” Her whole face lit up, thrilled by the simple act of remembering a name. “She lives in Maine with her grandmother…or at least she did while I was still alive…”

  Her words trailed off, the implication clear. This woman had no clue how much time had passed on Earth since her soul had been banished to the Bone City. It could have been months, years, or even decades.

  Archer’s horror deepened. “And what’s your name?”

  The woman stared at her as if she’d asked her for the answer to a complex mathematical problem. She’d been right; the woman didn’t know who she was any longer. The memory of her daughter was the last part of her old life she’d refused to let go of, clinging to it with all her strength.

  “It’s okay. I don’t need to know who you are,” Archer said. “If I make it out of here, I’ll find your daughter. She’ll know the message is coming from her mother.”

  The woman’s voice trembled with emotion and bordered on panic. “You swear it’s the first thing you’ll do?”

  “I told you, we have a deal. You help get me out of this place, and I will let your daughter know how much she matters to you. I promise.”

  Archer intended on keeping her word even though she had no idea how a message from beyond the grave would go over. She’d cross that bridge once she made it back to Earth. For now, she needed to focus on more pressing problems, like getting to the train stop before her guide forgot the directions. Fortunately, it seemed that only the memories of the woman’s earthly life had been affected by the spooks’ terrible curse. The woman still knew her way around the underground labyrinth. It made sense, if Archer really thought about it. Good memories would be few and far in a place like this. She would never forget the details of this nightmare city.

  Archer lost track of time as they stumbled through the tunnel system. Her spirits lifted as they at last reached a staircase that led her to the surface of this mysterious world. She was both thrilled and terrified at the same time. It meant they were closing in on their destination, but it also signaled the end of this brief respite from the robed predators that stalked the surface.

  They climbed the stairs in silence and emerged in a small chamber that measured about ten feet across. Their footsteps reverberated on the mosaic of bleached human remains.

  “We’re almost there,” the woman whispered.

  Archer’s guard remained up, unwilling to relax, her hand pressed against the grip of her Glock. If push came to shove, she would battle the demonic bastards to the bitter end.

  When they passed through the next doorway, Archer froze. They weren’t alone anymore. Shadowy shapes stirred in the encroaching darkness.

  Archer reflexively brought up her gun, but her guide stopped her from squeezing the trigger. “It’s okay. They are just like us. Like me,” she corrected herself.

  As Archer’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out more details. The figures were male and female, old and young, their bodies branded by whatever had killed them. There was the bald, emaciated wisp of a man who must’ve succumbed to cancer. The obese woman who might have perished of a heart attack. The tattooed biker riddled with bullets holes.

  Souls doomed to suffer for all eternity.

  Among the patchwork of earthly injuries, Archer spotted the burn marks. The soulless had fed on them, probably multiple times. How many of their most precious memories had they lost since they’d arrived in this place? Their probing eyes shone with incomprehension, fear, and even hope as they regarded them.

  These damned souls know I’m alive. Archer realized.

  “They’re hiding from the spooks just like us,” her guide explained. “Just keep moving. Don’t look at them for too long.”

  Archer wondered why they needed to avoid the other cursed souls. She received the answer to this question a moment later. The bundled-up figures shambled toward them.

  “You’re alive,” one woman declared, her words echoing through the energized crowd.

  A man lurking about three feet away lunged at her. Within seconds, more of the hollow-faced figures surrounded her, eager to make contact. Like lepers seeking solace from a miracle healer, they reached out to her, their desperation a palpable force. Almost as if a simple touch from her could restore their flesh-and-blood existence.

  In this place of eternal death and damnation, Archer figured her life force burned bright, a beacon of hope and peace. It proved irresistible to the damned.

  A howl went up from the crowd, and soon other voices joined in. The figures pleaded with her, desperate for her attention. They all had sins to confess, messages to pass on, regrets to voice. They wanted to tell their stories, and Archer was their best chance at preserving a part themselves.

  As their lamentations rose in a chorus of the damned, she let out a strangled sob, overwhelmed by the collective misery on display. Hot tears filled Archer’s eyes, and her resolve faltered. It was too much to process; she felt overwhelmed. Her world grew brittle. She was about to break like a dam under this powerful onslaught of human emotion. She couldn’t turn her back on them.

  I have to help them. Someone has to!

  She was drowning in their sorrow, choking on their pain. This
tide of doomed humanity threatened to sweep her away.

  The woman’s strong grip on her wrist snapped her from the paralysis. She pulled Archer away from the seething mob of lost souls. The moans grew distant as the crowd at last thinned, and the damned returned to the shadows that had spawned them. Despite their pain, the lost souls didn’t chase after them. Archer didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if she’d stopped moving.

  The Damned were almost as dangerous as the Soulless. She would remember that next time.

  Archer clenched her fists, struggling with the surging emotions inside of her.

  Keep your cool, girl.

  Easier said than done. She inhaled deeply. In and out. That’s right. Breathe. Relax.

  She didn’t feel afraid of the Damned. She pitied them and prayed they would soon find some semblance of peace. Perhaps losing one’s memories was the better option in this place.

  The woman eyed her knowingly. “I know what you’re thinking. Maybe it’s better to forget in a place where there is no hope.”

  Archer held her gaze but didn’t know what to say in response.

  “Becoming one of the Soulless offers no solace from the past. The spooks remember their old lives. They remember all the bad parts. All their sins.”

  Tears streamed down her face. Archer was about to give her a hug when the damned woman stopped her. Resolve entered her gaze as she wiped away her tears. “No, I don’t deserve anyone’s compassion. I’ve done terrible, terrible things.”

  Haven’t we all, Archer mentally added, but the words wouldn’t leave her lips.

  Back in control of her feelings, the woman said, “Follow me. We’re almost there.”

  A few minutes later, they entered a large space which looked like a train station of a post-apocalyptic city. This was not a destination anyone would ever want to visit.

  Her guide pointed at a pair of cobweb-covered escalator stairs which vanished in the tomblike darkness below.

  “The train will stop in—”

  She broke off, eyes growing alert as she peered down the escalators.

  Archer followed her gaze. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “They’re here…”

  Archer’s blood turned to ice. The yawning darkness rippled, and the monklike specters emerged up the escalators with lightning speed. Before Archer could fire her gun, two of the specters enveloped the woman.

  No!

  Their cowled heads descended on her guide’s bare flesh. Sucking sounds filled the chamber as tattered robes enveloped the damned woman.

  Rage exploded in Archer as she unloaded a full magazine into the creatures. The spooks reared back, their pain-filled howls ringing through the station.

  Good. Scream in pain.

  The robes swirled and dispersed and became one with the shadows of the station again. The spooks vanished. Archer hesitated for a beat and snapped a fresh magazine in her Glock.

  Once certain the creatures were gone, Archer rushed up to the woman and knelt beside her. Fresh burn marks lined her neck and face. They looked like the sucker marks of a giant squid.

  “Are you alright?” Archer’s voice sounded hollow.

  What a ridiculous question. Of course she’s not alright. Just look at her! Who would be after an attack like that…

  “Hey, I’m so sorry. Can you hear me?”

  She peered up at Archer with a blank expression. “Who are you?”

  Archer shivered. The soulless had fed too much. Was there anything left of the woman?

  “Who are you?” she demanded again. The question hung in the air for a beat.

  Why doesn’t she recognize me?

  Archer answered her own question. Helping me gave her hope. I’m one of her last good memories. And those bastards took even that from her.

  “I’m your friend,” Archer said. “Remember? I’m going to find Dianna and tell her…”

  “Who is Dianna?”

  Archer flinched. The woman had forgotten her own daughter, the very reason she was helping her.

  The damned woman trailed off as her eyes rolled back in their sockets, turning first white, then pitch black.

  Her mouth opened, and she unleashed an inhuman shriek.

  Archer staggered back, shaken to the core.

  Her guide—her only hope of returning to the world of the living—was turning into one of the Soulless.

  12

  I adjusted the timer on my watch to a Sixty-minute countdown.

  Sixty minutes to locate Archer.

  Sixty minutes to face and defeat Morgal.

  And let’s not even talk about finding a way to free Skulick’s soul from this accursed place.

  No pressure now.

  If we failed to return to the warehouse before the one-hour mark was up, we would be doomed to spend the rest of our days in Hell. The only upside—we wouldn’t last long in the dimension of fear. At least I wouldn’t. A snowball would have a better chance in Hell than yours truly. Cyon’s odds might be slightly better. My enemy list had been growing over the years, and there would be a fair share of demons eager to even the score, with Morgal at the top of that list.

  We had set ourselves a near impossible challenge, but then again, I never thought we’d make it this far. This whole undertaking would’ve felt like a creative form of suicide if it hadn’t been for Archer and Skulick. I was doing this for them. They needed me.

  And thankfully Cyon appeared to have a plan.

  He believed the Daemonium would succeed in Hell where Demon Slayer had failed on Earth. The former witch hunter turned demon carried both items on him, and I felt a little naked armed with only Hellseeker and the Seal of Solomon.

  Or maybe I missed the demon’s strength and supernatural abilities. Fused in one body, Cyon and I had become far greater than the sum of our parts. Would we function as smoothly as two separate halves of a team?

  You do not miss being possessed, Raven. Quit thinking like that, I told myself.

  I peered through one of the large windows again, riveted to the nightmare skyline in the near distance. Bone towers stabbed clouds made of sizzling fireballs. The warehouse had materialized on the outer edges of the bone city in a barren, desolate landscape of jagged rocks and fuming geysers. This wasteland stretched for about a mile around the city. A lone roadway paved in human bones cut through the black desert.

  Tilting my gaze up at the sky, an ocean of flame greeted me. The burning sky silhouetted the surreal skyline of the bone city a mile up ahead. Peering up at the firmament was like looking into an active volcano or the center of the sun.

  I hugged myself tightly. Sweat stung my eyes, yet my teeth chattered incessantly. I was both freezing and dying of heat. Icy cold radiated from the rocky ground and pricked my skin like needles, while the lavalike maelstrom of flames burned mercilessly down on me from above.

  I didn’t know what I’d expected to encounter, but the reality was far darker and grander than anything I could’ve dreamt up. How many hundreds of thousands of skeletons had been used to will this hellscape into existence?

  I shifted my focus to Cyon. He stood in the middle of the warehouse, where he clutched Archer’s Witch Whip tightly while whispering words in a mystical tongue. The various glyphs and occult symbols covering the walls and floor all glowed with a spooky green-blue light, almost as if the symbols were the control panels of an occult spaceship.

  “Can you see Archer?” I asked, almost dreading the answer.

  Cyon looked up from the magical whip, his eyes distant, fixed on a vision beyond my senses.

  “She’s here, and she’s alive. For now.” His voice grew serious. “We must hurry.”

  I nodded and tapped the chronometer. The numbers were steadily ticking down. “Let’s do this!”

  I tried to sound braver than I felt. I had caught enough terrifying glimpses of the Bone City to know we were in for the fight of our lives. I shook my head as I approached my wheels. This was madness. I was about to drive through
Hell in a jet-black muscle car with a demon in the passenger seat. The only thing missing was for me to crank up the radio and play “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.

  Cyon stepped up to the warehouse’s loading bay and slid the steel door open. He studied me for a beat. “Do you want me to drive?”

  I shot Cyon a glare. “Not a chance in Hell.”

  Cyon cracked a thin smile. Tough crowd.

  I slipped behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. Cyon took a seat beside me. As soon as the passenger door slammed shut, I floored the gas. The engine roared, and a heartbeat later, we were on our way, tires rippling across a road paved with human bones. They glistened in the crimson light beating down from the burning sky. The warehouse receded in my rearview mirror. I hoped it would still be there when we got back. What if Cyon’s wards weren’t strong enough to keep the demons out? What would stop them from storming the place that was our only means to return to our world?

  Cyon’s voice pulled me out of my gloomy thoughts. “Not quite what you imagined, is it?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. To be honest, I tried to not think about the details too much. I didn’t want to talk myself out of coming here.”

  “The Bone City is only one of the many realms that make up the dimension of fear. But Morgal’s rise to prominence began here. It is only fitting we should face him in his first hellish kingdom.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “The Bone City was the first realm the Dark Lord offered Morgal after he proved himself worthy to rule beside his master.”

  I considered this for a beat and asked, “What did he have to do to prove himself?”

  Cyon didn’t respond immediately, almost as if he was trying to figure out how to sum up the history of Hell in a nice little soundbite. Not an easy feat, for sure.

  “How much do you know about Atlantis?”

  Cyon now had my full attention. I had dealt with cursed items from the mythical continent over the years, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert on the matter. Not even close.

  “Not much. Why?”

  “Thousands of years ago, an Atlantean mage conjured and trapped a low-level demon in a binding circle in very much the same way Marek imprisoned me. But the mage’s ritual was flawed. Morgal—for it was indeed him—broke out of his prison and seized control over the occultist’s magic to wreak a terrible vengeance on the continent.