Hellfighters

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  CITY OF DEATH

  There were no working lights down here, Pan realized, but seeing wasn’t exactly a problem, because her hair was on fire.

  Her hair was on fire.

  Pan slapped at her head, gagging at the stench. The flames illuminated the bones that made up the walls, the grinning skulls—not that she could see much past the eye-watering pain of it. Her scalp stung like she’d been apple bobbing in a vat of acid, but after a second or two the fire fizzled out.

  “Goddammit, Herc,” she said to the sudden darkness. “A little warning?”

  “Sorry,” said the big guy. “It was a time-sensitive shot.”

  Pan heard rustling, then a rattle. There was a soft click and the corridor popped out of the dark again, illuminated by the huge Maglite in Herc’s hand. He beamed it back and forth, blinding her. She blinked, feeling instinctively for the crossbow strapped to her back. She hadn’t used it in the battle outside, even when the lion demon was trying to bite her in two. With only three bolts, she wanted to save it for when she was face-to-face with Mammon.

  Only now, in the relative quiet—she could still hear muted roars from outside, the patter of dust and rubble, the deep, ragged breaths from around her—did her body seem to remember that it had been injured. The pain crept back in slowly but insistently, starting in the pounding muscles of her calves, moving up through a sprained knee, a torn muscle in her lower back, bruised ribs, and a nose that might have been broken.

  It was just pain, though. As familiar as an old friend.

  And welcome, too, because if you were hurting, it meant you were still alive. It was Herc who’d always said that to her after a mission.

  “Man, that was bad,” said Truck, pacing back and forth between the walls. He reached out and placed his hand on them, then seemed to notice the bones there, recoiling. She knew exactly what he was thinking.

  This could have been us, dead and buried.

  Give it time, Truck, she thought. The day isn’t over yet.

  “Nobody missing any body parts?” Herc asked.

  There was a collective clapping of hands on flesh as they all patted themselves down. Pan could already feel the power of the Engine coursing through her, the contract keeping her alive, repairing wounds.

  “I’m cool,” said Truck. He had no contract, but he’d been in enough scrapes to know how to handle pain.

  “All well and good,” said Taupe.

  “Nothing missing,” said Marlow. “But everything hurts.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Herc replied. “If you feel pain, it means you’re still alive.”

  Pan couldn’t help but smile at the old guy’s predictability.

  “Where’d the girl go?” he asked.

  “You brought her in?” said Pan. “You idiot, Marlow, didn’t you learn anything from the train?”

  Always trying to rescue people, how could anyone be such a selfish jerk? She looked behind her. In one direction the tunnel was a mound of rock, debris still falling from the collapsed ceiling. The other way stretched into darkness, no sign of anybody else. “That was real stupid, Herc. If this is the path to Mammon then she’s going to be halfway to him by now. Bang goes our element of surprise.”

  “Pan, we just blew up half of Paris,” Herc said. “God knows how many of his Engineers died out there. A giant metal lion was eating people. Our element of surprise went out the window a while back.”

  Pan shook her head, shooting Marlow a look she hoped he could feel. She leaned back against the uncomfortable wall so that she wouldn’t crumple onto the floor, shatter like bone. The shakes were starting, the adrenaline runoff making her feel unbearably tired. They were lucky to have made it through the last few minutes. Really lucky. That many Engineers, that many powers, plus the redhead with her impossible dagger. Thinking about it now, she had no idea how they’d gotten as far as making it out of the bus.

  And they hadn’t even reached Mammon yet.

  “You think this is the right place?” Truck asked.

  “I do not know,” Taupe replied. “If I were you, I would have picked a different route, maybe one less dangerous. It was crazy going up against all those Engineers.”

  Everyone turned to the Frenchman, glaring, and he broke into a smile that was brighter than the flashlight. He held up his hands.

  “Joke, joke. I am sorry. Yes, I do believe we made the right decision.”

  Herc shrugged.

  “I can’t see Mammon putting that many people here if he didn’t have something to hide. Chances are we’re on the right track. Not like we have a choice now anyway.”

  Pan looked down the passageway again. There was something there, something in the way the walls seemed to shift and blur—nothing to do with the wavering flashlight. It was the same sensation she’d felt up top, a pulse of rancid, gut-churning energy that made her want to tear out her own insides, there and gone again, there and gone again, like a heartbeat.

  “We’re on the right track,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Marlow, one hand on his stomach. He looked paper-thin, like he might just fold away into nothing. He met her eye and she knew he felt it, too. The Engine was inside them both, and something was calling to them.

  “What’s the plan, then?” she asked. “We should call Ostheim, let him know where we are.”

  “He knows,” said Herc, pulling a small black box from his pocket. “Transponder. Not sure if it will work beneath the ground but he’ll know our entry point.”

  “Then we wait for him, oui?” said Taupe, brushing dust and ash from his jacket.

  “Why?” said Truck. “Old geezer couldn’t win a wrestling match against a pudding.”

  “Truck!” yelled Herc.

  “You saw him, dude. He’s about as useless to us down here as a fart in the wind.”

  “Truck!”

  “What?” Truck said, holding up his hands. “Am I the only one thinking it?”

  “Got a point,” said Pan. “Looked like he wouldn’t have said boo to a goose.”

  “Looks like he would have crapped his pants if he’d seen a goose,” added Marlow.

  “He’s still the boss,” said Herc, jabbing a finger at them. “But no, we’re not waiting for him. Our job is to find the Engine, one of them, both of them, I don’t even know. Find it and work out a way of destroying it. Time is ticking, people. Let’s go.”

  He heaved up his backpack, fumbling with the Desert Eagle and the flashlight. “Any of you lazy bastards want to help?”

  Marlow took the flashlight from him, shining it down the tunnel. There was barely a scrap of wall that wasn’t bone, making Pan feel like she was descending the throat of some huge, ancient creature. Skulls stared at her with big, empty eyes. Everything shuddered again, a ripple of bad energy rolling past her. This time it had audio, whispers scuttling around the bowl of her skull like insects.

  The same sensation she always had standing next to the Red Door.

  “Can we go?” she snapped, scratching at her head. If she had to stay here for much longer she was going to lose her mind. She didn’t wait for a reply, just started walking, her shadow leading the way. She conjured a handful of sparks that fizzed over her palm, illuminating the tunnel. Interspersed with the bones were various plaques—touristy stuff that seemed so out of place here, it was laughable.

  “This is the public face of the Catacombs,” Taupe said, jogging to her side. “A museum, really. But the tunnels stretch for nearly two hundred miles, maybe more. Nobody really knows.”

  She nodded, although she wasn’t really listening. It was taking everything she had to put one foot in front of the other. The stench of smoke, of sulfur, of vaporized blood hung in her sinuses, every breath she took reminding her of death. The tunnel seemed to shrink around her, the whole weight of the world pressing down, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe at all.

  “Have no fear, Pan,” said Taupe, and his arms were around her, reassuringly solid—a cage in an ocean full of sharks. She pu
shed her face into his chest and inhaled, breathing in the pleasant, unfamiliar smell of him until the panic attack passed. “We are here. We are alive. We are together.”

  He squeezed her, gently, then let go.

  She nodded, smudging away tears that she hadn’t even noticed were there. But the passageway did seem wider, the layers of rock and bone overhead a little lighter. Everybody had come to a standstill again, all eyes on her.

  “Nobody said saving the world would be easy, kiddo,” said Herc, his flashlight blinding her.

  “Piss off,” she said.

  Then Marlow was there, walking to her, his arms wide like he meant to swallow her up. She turned away. “And that goes for you, too, Marlow.”

  When you’re going through hell, just keep walking.

  She did, the tunnel splitting in two. She didn’t even hesitate, her blood swelling like an ocean in high tide, pulling her to the left. A red rope stretched from wall to wall, a sign hanging from it saying NO ENTRY in half a dozen languages. She stepped over it, the sparks dripping from her fingers and hissing out on the wet floor.

  “Sure this is right?” said Herc as they reached another fork and Pan led them left.

  “This is right,” she said. She’d never felt the pull of the Engine like this, not even in the moments before a contract, standing next to the black pool. It was like it had a hand in her soul, physically dragging her along. Her guts were churning but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was the same sensation she always had before seeing the Engine—dread, yes, and terror, and panic, and confusion.

  But excitement, too. Always excitement.

  There was a spiral staircase ahead and she ran down it, careful not to slip on the stone. Her fistful of lightning brought the bones to life, making the skulls seem to chatter. There were more whispers now. So many of them, as if the dead were talking to her. Other noises, too. Phantom groans, the click of insect tongues, the wet thumps and slices of a butcher’s shop. Not sounds, nothing she could pick up with her ears. But she didn’t need ears—these were inside her soul.

  “Jesus, it’s cold down here,” said Marlow, shivering in his T-shirt. “How deep do they go?”

  “Nobody really knows,” said Taupe. “Nobody has explored the whole thing.”

  “Great,” Marlow muttered. “Thought you were an expert.”

  “I have spent more time underground than anyone else I know,” Taupe spat back. “You will not find a better guide to the city of the dead.”

  “It’s why his name is Taupe,” said Herc. “French for Mole.”

  “Mole?” Marlow said, improvising. “I thought that was because of his big nose and squinty eyes.”

  Taupe spun around, jabbing a finger back up the stairs.

  “You should watch your mouth, petit garçon,” he said.

  “Or what?” Marlow dropped down another couple of steps so they were face-to-face. “You gonna dig a tunnel underneath me?”

  “Tu chien insolent—”

  Something clattered down the steps above them, a pebble. It skipped past Pan’s feet and disappeared around the corner.

  “Shut up,” she said to the bickering boys. Then, when Taupe kept speaking, she reached up and grabbed his arm, hard. He turned to her. “That girl,” she asked Marlow. “Was she the invisible one?”

  A scuffing sound from the way they’d come. Pan broke into a run, pushing past Marlow so hard he toppled onto his ass. She swiped her arms in the air before her, searching. Then she flicked out a bolt of lightning that burned into the stone. Another, and another—this one making contact with something that wasn’t there.

  A soft scream inside the rolling waves of thunder, the girl materializing in the dark. She collapsed, her body spasming like she’d been Tasered. Pan stumbled up the steps and grabbed her before she could vanish again. Christ, she was young, thirteen maybe, twelve even. Her eyes had rolled up in their sockets, her hands groping the air. Then she was back, her face a mask of terror as she realized she’d been caught.

  “Non,” she said, then she was gone—just stone and darkness where she had been lying. Pan still had her, though, her fingers wrapped around two stick-thin arms. She loosed another jolt of energy and the girl screamed, reappearing.

  “Don’t,” said Pan. “The more you struggle, the worse this gets.”

  She shocked her again, just enough to make her pay attention. The girl stopped squirming, then burst into tears—great, heaving sobs.

  “Maman,” she said. “Maman maman maman.”

  “Shut up,” Pan said, another shock. The girl started fitting, bucking hard on the steps, foaming at the mouth.

  “Pan!” It was Marlow, by her side. “She’s just a kid.”

  “She’s one of his,” she spat. “If she’s old enough to make a contract then she’s old enough to know what she’s doing. Where is he?”

  Another jolt, and this time Marlow grabbed her, pulling her away. She lost her balance on the narrow stairs and fell into the wall. Marlow wrapped his hands around the girl and the look in his eye was crystal clear.

  Don’t try it.

  “You gonna let your pathetic emotions decide what happens to the world?” Pan said, pushing herself up. “You gonna let one girl’s life get in the way of millions? Billions?”

  “And what if I do?” he shouted back. “If you think a single life is worth sacrificing then how are you any different from Mammon? How are you any different from him?”

  She opened her mouth to fire something back, realized she didn’t have any ammunition.

  “Screw you, Marlow,” she said.

  “Maman,” the girl whimpered.

  “Yeah, where is he?” Pan said. “Tell us where he’s hiding.”

  “She’s not saying Mammon,” said Taupe. “She’s saying maman. It means mother—mom. She is scared senseless.”

  “It’s okay,” said Marlow, still holding her. “We won’t hurt you. But look, we need to know where he is. We need to find the Engine. I don’t know what Mammon told you, but you can’t want this, can you? You can’t seriously want him to win this war?”

  The girl shook her head, her sobs softening. She stared at them all, her eyes so full of tears they could have been made of glass—a doll’s eyes.

  “He promise me,” she said in broken English. “He promise us all, we would not hurt. I did not … did not think … Il est un démon, il est le diable, non?”

  “He’s a demon,” Taupe translated. “The devil.”

  “You’ve seen him? Mammon?” Herc asked.

  The girl nodded, pointing at the floor.

  “Ici. Here. Très profond.”

  “Deep,” said Taupe. “You know the way?”

  “He will kill me,” she said. “Those things, les monstres. I did not think it was real. I did not think it was real.”

  “It’s real,” said Pan. “About as real as it gets. You need to take us to him.”

  She started to cry again.

  “Non,” she said. “He told us what you would do. He told us what would happen if you took the Engines for yourselves.”

  “And you prefer his way?” said Pan. “You think that’s better?”

  “His way keep me off the street,” she said. “His way keep me alive.”

  Pan spat out a laugh, sending another bolt of blinding light thudding into the ceiling.

  “You wanna bet on that?” she said, sparks raining down. “Listen to me. You’ve got one chance. You either take us to him, or I kill you right here, and right now. You ever seen a watermelon that’s had a thousand volts pumped into it? It’s messy.”

  “Non,” she said. “S’il vous plaît, s’il vous plaît.”

  “One,” said Pan, rippling curves of light dancing on her palm. Her whole arm ached with the pressure of it, her skin tingling with the electric charge. The girl had obviously been brainwashed by Mammon the same way all of his Engineers had been, but she must have known. You don’t make a deal with the devil and not suspect something. “Two,”
she said. “Last chance.”

  “It does not matter,” she said. “It does not matter anymore.”

  “It matters to us,” Marlow said. “It matters to the world.”

  The girl looked up at him, frowning.

  “It does not matter because you are too late,” she said.

  “That’s a lie,” said Pan.

  “It is the truth,” the girl said. And this time she met Pan’s eye and didn’t blink. “You are too late. Mammon has already joined the Engines. They are one, and all of this, this stupid war, this stupid fight, it is over.” She closed her eyes, squeezing out tears that shimmered in the lightning storm. “It is done.”

  IT’S OVER

  “You’re a lying bi—”

  “No!” yelled Marlow. Pan was storming toward the girl, her hand crackling, and he threw himself between them. The power leaking from her was enough to make his hair stand on end. The spark she’d thrown at the ceiling had gouged out a star-shaped crater in the rock, and he didn’t want to think about what it would do to the contents of his skull.

  “She wants it to be over, then it can be over for her, no sweat,” Pan said, her face twisted into something that didn’t look human, that looked almost demonic. Marlow had never seen her like this, never seen her so full of fury. Even after everything he had been through, every horror he had witnessed, it made him feel jellyfish scared, like every bone in his body had turned to seawater. He didn’t move, though. He knew that if he did then Pan would blast the kid to atoms, that they’d all be brushing her ash from their clothes and coughing it from their lungs. “We need her,” he said. “She can still take us there.”

  “Marlow’s right,” said Herc, clapping a hand on Pan’s shoulder and making her flinch.

  “You honestly think she will? You think she’s going to just lead us right to the Engines? She’ll take us the other way, or right into a trap. She’s one of his, Herc, she’s so full of crap. How can you not see that?”

  “Why do you say it’s over?” Marlow said to the girl. “How do you even know that?”