Soul Catcher (26 page)

A heavy trudge came from the direction of the train, the sound of an advancing army. Thankfully, it was enough to make the Watchers look up from their meal. Dane tried to get a better look at the damage to his body from within his glass prison.

“Fu—” Lucifer’s curse was cut off by the howl of a Watcher at the back of the crowd.

Chaos broke out. Watchers scattered. At the edge of the crowd, unholy screams preceded geysers of black blood. Trapped under glass, Dane couldn’t see Malini’s army of the dead behind the crowd, but he could guess the damage. A head rolled near his feet, and a disembodied arm made an awful splat near Lucifer’s head.

Lucifer charged into his minions. With a powerful sweeping motion, he parted the crowd and sent Malini’s zombies tumbling like bowling pins. Dane had a clear view of the dead, mostly bones and half eaten flesh. Was this the end? Had Lucifer destroyed their last hope of escape?

Slowly, the bones stood back up. They kept coming. Lucifer ripped more apart, only for the bones to come back together. The other Watchers joined in the fight. Even Auriel got off her chair and attacked the dead. The two crouched over Dane’s body mercifully became distracted by the fight. They abandoned their meal to watch the dead be dismembered by the Watchers who’d filled the street—burned with sorcery or pulled limb from limb.

Dane cast a worried glance toward Malini, whose skin had begun to blister. She bared her teeth. He turned back toward the battle. Another wave of dead joined the fray. Black blood sprayed across his glass enclosure.

“It’s working! Keep ‘em coming, Mal!” Dane cheered.

Auriel panicked, wielding a terrible flaming sword at the dead, and grinned broadly as they burst into flame. The burning dead didn’t run. Bones blazing, they continued forward, skeletons of death, tearing apart anything in their path. A few desperate howls rose up from Watchers who’d failed to escape in time, including the dark-haired Watcher and the female. They sizzled in the unholy flames before being shredded by the crowd of undead.

“My Lord, perhaps we should take shelter inside,” Auriel said, pulling on Lucifer’s elbow.

He cast her off of him, his fury filling the streets of Nod. Pivoting, he glared at the source of the army of dead, Malini. “Enough.” The force of his attack was so great that he dropped the spell around Dane, who slammed back into his body just in time to see the gilded cage ignite into green flames.

“Lord God, NO!” he yelled.

Chin to his chest, Lucifer spread his lips from his multitude of sharp teeth. He turned back toward the army of the dead. “Auriel, take care of our pest.”

Dane didn’t hesitate. He rolled to the nearest piece of junk he could use as a weapon, a section of metal scrap with a jagged edge. Flipping to the balls of his feet, he faced Auriel head on.

She laughed wickedly. “Oh, Dane, are you some kind of hero now. Please. I own you. I’ve always owned you. You are nothing, NOTHING, but a country bumpkin with a thing for boys.” She swung her sword of fire at his torso.

With Soulkeeper speed, he dodged her attack, stabbing toward her abdomen. He missed.

“The problem, Auriel,” he said, dodging her attack, “is you never really knew me at all.” He somersaulted backward. She drove him toward the wall of the city. “If you had, you would know not to underestimate me.”

He opened himself up, and she stabbed toward his torso. But just as her fiery blade threatened to skewer his heart, he used Ghost’s power to break apart and form behind her. He stabbed the chunk of metal through the center of her spine and twisted. The junk wasn’t blessed. It wouldn’t kill her. But Dane was sure it hurt.

Her scream ripped through the crowd.

Boom!
Dane crashed into the wall of Nod and crumpled to the dirt.

Lucifer caught Auriel’s body in his arms, yanking the metal fragment from between her wings. His eyes drilled into Dane’s. “This isn’t over, Soulkeeper. Not by a long shot.” He snapped his fingers. Lucifer and Auriel disappeared, as did the Watchers circling above them and those running from Malini’s zombies.

As soon as they were gone, the undead collapsed. The zombies fell apart, one by one. Bones and flesh were sucked back to their burial places.

“Malini!” Dane yelled. He dragged his broken body from the street. The cage blazed higher. He reached for Jacob’s power, but there wasn’t a drop of water anywhere to put out the flames.

I’m alive
. Her voice was strained but sure.

“Malini?”

The fire lowered, and Dane glimpsed her small form curled on her side in the center of the cage. Badly burned, her entire body was blackened and blistered. She shouldn’t be alive. Dane remembered the ring of fire where Lucifer had imprisoned him in Hell. He’d tried to kill himself in it and couldn’t. The sorcery kept him alive no matter what. Maybe, the enchantment meant to contain her had protected her.

He rushed forward and stomped out the remaining flames. The cage didn’t have a door, but he circled the bars and delivered a front kick to the flimsiest looking section. The assault of Lucifer’s own sorcery had weakened the cage. The section crumbled. He rushed to her side.

Almost burnt beyond recognition, her amber eyes rolled back in her head. He unbuttoned and removed his plaid shirt. Carefully, he dressed her in it, then scooped her into his aching arms. Her head lolled against his chest. Dane swallowed, hard. Without the enchantment of the cage, would she die?

“Malini? Malini? Stay with me.”

“Where the hell are we?” Dane jerked at Cheveyo’s voice. The Hopi boy wobbled toward him in the abandoned street.

“So now you decide to wake up!” Dane spat. “Thank you, mister ten-minutes-too-late.”

“Uh, sorry, but not really sure how I could’ve helped anyway. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“Perfect—” Dane was cut off by Malini’s rattling breath.

“Get. Out. Of. Here.”

“Gladly.” Dane repositioned her in his arms, causing her to grunt from the pain. “Sorry, Mal, there’s no other way.”

The gate to Nod could only be unlocked by a Watcher, but as fate would have it, the heavy doors had been left open. Dane didn’t question why. He strode through to the thorn-lined path with Cheveyo hobbling behind him.

* * * * *

Alexandra watched the one called Dane leave Nod with the Healer in his arms. She was the reason the gate was open, having escaped from the walking dead minutes before. If she’d been loyal and brave, she might have destroyed the Soulkeepers right then. But Alexandra was not loyal or brave. She was a Watcher, and a crippled one at that.

She flexed the wing Lucifer had torn off. The appendage was growing back slowly but still mostly illusion. Normally, healing would be quick and easy, but Lucifer’s touch had cursed the wound and left her with this. No, she wasn’t going to risk a single feather for anyone but herself.

After the boy was well out of sight, she slipped back inside the gates of Nod seeing the remnants of the Watchers killed in battle. The street was coated in black blood. Still, they couldn’t all be dead, although she couldn’t find a single one. The click-clack of her stiletto boots echoed on the street.

Her fate was evident in every empty building she searched. Lucifer had taken the survivors but left her. His action was the ultimate slap in the face. As an angel who had followed him at the fall, Lucifer had an intimate knowledge of the stuff she was made of; all of the fallen were tied to him on a metaphysical level. She wasn’t merely forgotten. She was abandoned.

Watchers didn’t cry. They couldn’t. The stuff they were made of wasn’t capable of the full spectrum of emotions, but rather hovered in the vicinity of the seven deadly sins. In this case, Alexandra’s pride and sense of self-preservation fueled the anger that drove her from Nod, and raw jealousy of Auriel’s position hastened her pursuit. She’d kill the Soulkeeper, recapture the Healer, and, with any luck, she’d be sitting in the throne room tomorrow. Maybe, if she did well, the evil one would even fix her wing.

Fourth World

B
y the time they reached the underground garden, Dane was falling apart. His nose was bleeding furiously, and his brain throbbed like it’d been bludgeoned inside his skull. By the rattle in Malini’s breath, he was pretty sure she was dying.

“This is the tree,” he said to Cheveyo. “We touch it, and it will take us home.”

He leaned his shoulder onto the bark, and then repositioned Malini to place his palm flat against the trunk for good measure. Nothing happened.

“Malini, it’s not working.”

“Too late. Need sorcery,” she rasped.

“I’m fresh out of sorcery. How the hell do we get out of here?”

Malini didn’t answer. She went limp in his arms, her breath shallow.

Cheveyo stared at him blankly.

Dane closed his eyes in frustration. He had to think of something, but who could think with this pounding? Strange, it almost seemed like…

“Do you hear that?” he asked Cheveyo.

“What?”

“It’s like…drumbeats.”

“No. I don’t hear anything.”

“Do you think it’s the Watchers?”

Cheveyo shook his head. “Judging by the looks of that place I wouldn’t say they were into music or the arts. Where I come from, drums are sacred.”

“Follow,” Malini rasped.

Dane widened his eyes. “It’s as good a hope as any. Let’s go.” Wiping the blood from his face with the back of his sleeve, he led the way toward the rhythm of the drums. He had to go slowly because Cheveyo couldn’t see in the dark and the path he took snaked through the thorny landscape. Between the blood loss and Malini’s weight, he was incapable of speed anyway.

“I hear them,” Cheveyo said, squeezing his shoulder. “Those are Hopi drums, Dane. This is the way out!”

Dane tried to walk faster, but every step brought pain. The path widened and the thorn bushes became sparse, replaced by juniper trees, cactus, and deep green shrubs. Soon, the landscape was bathed in a bright, warm glow from ahead.

Cheveyo released his shoulder. “Come on.” He jogged toward the light.

Step by labored step, Dane caught up, the drums growing louder and louder as he approached. When he reached the source, his jaw dropped. He’d entered a summer land of sun and sand, in a circle of pueblos and smiling Native American faces. Cheveyo stood at the center of the community, arms open.

A man with a heavily lined face and a small animal skin kilt approached Cheveyo and spoke to him in a language Dane didn’t understand. He didn’t have the strength to call up Jacob’s gift to translate, and he didn’t have to. Cheveyo understood what he was saying. The exchange was warm and ended in a familial embrace.

When it was over, Cheveyo rushed to Dane. “We have to hurry. The way is only open during the ceremony, while the drums are still beating.”

Dane followed Cheveyo’s lead to a tall and worrisome wooden ladder. Would the ancient wood hold? Could he carry Malini and climb to the top? And for that matter, where was the top?

“Give her to me. I feel strong.” Cheveyo pulled Malini from Dane’s arms and rolled her over his shoulder, holding her legs against his chest with one arm, he began to climb with the other.

Dane didn’t argue with the plan. He had enough trouble pulling himself up the rungs.

“Where does this lead, Cheveyo? Are you sure the man can be trusted?

Cheveyo didn’t pause his slow and steady ascent. “That man is my great-great-great-great-grandfather and long ago chief of the Hopi tribe. This is our underworld, the land of our dead.”

“What? Here?”

“Don’t judge what you don’t understand.”

“Who’s judging?”

Fog rolled in, blocking out the light until even Dane couldn’t see a thing but the rung ahead of him. Over the sound of the drumbeats, another more soothing rhythm met his ears.

“I hear rain!” he said.

“Yes. We’re close,” Cheveyo said excitedly. His feet disappeared into the fog.

A wet clump of red hit Dane in the face. With one hand, he wiped it from his forehead. Mud. He climbed faster, into the muck, holding his breath as he plowed through a particularly thick stretch of wet dirt. When his head broke the surface, he gasped for breath, rain washing the remnants of earth and blood from his face. He thrust his hand up and, mercifully, Cheveyo clasped it between his own and hauled him up.

They were in another, more modern Hopi village, at the center of some type of ceremony with dancing and drums. Dane didn’t pause to appreciate the staring faces. He rushed to Malini’s side. The rain was helping wash the burn from her body, one drop at a time, but he knew he could help things considerably. Lifting her head, he called Jacob’s energy, and directed the rain to wash over her more thoroughly. A flinch. A sputter. Finally, she opened her eyes.

He lowered her head.

“Dane!” Malini yelled. But there was nothing she could do. He’d used up everything he had. Exhausted, he toppled toward the mud but wasn’t conscious long enough to feel the fall.

* * * * *

At the center of the Hopi ceremony, Cheveyo found it ironic that he’d ended up exactly where he’d begun. While Dane helped Malini, long fingers reached for him from the red mud. Bewildered, he grasped the hand and pulled.

“Stop! Cheveyo, don’t help her!” Malini screamed.

He yanked his hand away, but it was too late, the red-haired Watcher, Alexandra, clawed her way up from the hole. Her illusion melted with the rain, or maybe the power of the sacred space, and she stretched her hideous leathery wings.

“You’re mine, Healer,” she hissed through elongated fangs. Completely focused on Malini, the demon didn’t give Cheveyo a second glance. Her black scales twitched with rage.

Dane couldn’t help. He lay in a heap at Malini’s side. Cheveyo wasn’t sure what he could do to stop the Watcher from hurting his new friends or his old ones. But he had to do something.

Alexandra lowered her head and charged for Malini, talons flashing as lightning and thunder rocked the mesa.

“No!” Cheveyo yelled and thrust both hands into the Watcher’s scaly torso. He meant only to push the demon, to give everyone enough time to run, but from the very beginning, nothing had happened as Cheveyo expected. His soul transferred into the Watcher, his body dropping to the mud. From inside, Cheveyo felt the demon clutch its throat, then shake its head frantically. Alexandra clawed at her face until the black skin was sliced to ribbons. Through bulging eyes, Cheveyo watched a scaly hand swell bigger and bigger. Unable to contain him, the Watcher’s body finally popped. Black blood and chunks of scaly flesh showered the plaza, staining the walls of the surrounding pueblos and everyone in between. And Cheveyo, freed from his enemy, slipped back into his body.