The Book of Doom (20 page)

They looked at each other in silence for a long time. It was Angelo who eventually broke it.

“So what now?” he asked.

Murmur shrugged. “Wrestling?”

“
Wrestling?
”

“That’s a suitable father-son activity, isn’t it? Or fishing? You can catch some big ones in the Styx. Unless they catch you first. Or we could build a tree house? I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. You’re the only son I’ve got.”

A low
creak
made the room vibrate. Murmur’s eyes went wide. “No, no, no,” he said. “Not yet. Not already.”

“What is it?”

“They’ve found us.”

“Who’s found us?”

“
Them.
Haures and the others. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of this, but, well... I had to see you,” he swallowed, “
son
. I had to see you just once.”

The
creak
became a
rumble
. Half a dozen of Angelo’s books vibrated off his shelves. “What’s happening?” Angelo asked.

Murmur’s voice was a whisper. “They’re coming. Shout for your friend.”

“What?”

“Your friend. Shout for him. You’re safer together than apart.”

Murmur gestured towards the wall. The door was suddenly back where it had always been. Angelo reached for the handle, but a sharp cry from Murmur stopped him.

“No! Don’t go out there, you’ll get lost. Call for your friend.” He grabbed Angelo by the upper arms. There was fear flickering behind the flames in the demon’s eyes. “You hear me, son? Call your friend. I know I’ve got no right to say this, but you have to trust me. Call your friend. Now!”

Angelo hesitated, then he turned to the door, opened his mouth and shouted Zac’s name as loudly as he could.

Zac turned towards the kitchen door. “What was that?”

In the chair, Phillip shook his head. “Nothing. Ignore it. Stay here with me.”

Another shout came, even more panicked than the last.

“Angelo?”

Zac tried to stand, but his grandfather’s hand clamped his like a vice. “Stay here with me,” he said, and his wheeze became a menacing growl. “Don’t leave me again.”

Angelo was screaming, calling out for help.

“I have to check on him,” Zac said. “I’ll be back in one minute, OK?”

“
Don’t you dare leave me
,” Phillip warned, and now the growl had become a roar. Zac looked down at the chair, and panic made him yank his hand away. The person sitting there was no longer his grandfather. It had his grandfather’s skin, but things wriggled inside it as if trying to force their way free. The withered hand grabbed for his again, but Zac was backing away, making for the door.

Phillip’s mouth opened, and Zac saw poisonous shapes twisting there at the back of the throat. “Stay... with... me,” a chorus of voices insisted. “I’m... your... grandfather.”

“No,” said Zac. “You’re not.”

The kitchen door was blocked from the other side. That didn’t stop him. He powered a kick at it, driving his foot against the wood. There was a splintering
crack
and the door flew wide open.

He saw Angelo standing in what looked like his bedroom. A demon lurked right behind him. In one fluid movement Zac reached into his jacket. There was a
thwip
as he used up the last tranquilliser dart and the demon slumped down on to the floor. Angelo turned as he fell, and stood staring at him until Zac spoke.

“You all right?”

Angelo shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “That was my dad.”

“Oh. Right. Well, um, sorry I shot your dad.”

“My dad’s a demon,” said Angelo, his voice trembling.

Zac looked down at the slumbering Murmur. “God, yeah. So he is. Who knew?”

“He got parenting tips from Darth Vader,” Angelo continued. He turned to Zac, and Zac realised the boy was smiling. “How great is that? My dad likes
Star Wars
. He’s just like me.”

Angelo spotted the writhing shape in the doorway. It was squirming on the ground, black goo dripping from its nose and mouth.

“Ugh, what’s that?” he asked, recoiling in horror.

“No one important,” Zac said, pushing the door closed. There was a loud hammering on it almost at once. Angelo yelped in panic.

“Zaaaaaaac,” wheezed a voice on the other side of the wood. “Heeeelp meeee, Zaaaaaaac.”

Another low drone made the room shake. “What was that?” Zac asked.

“My dad said more demons are coming,” Angelo said. “What do we do?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” Zac admitted.

“Pleeeease, Zaaaaaac. Heeeelp meeee.”

“Oh, cut it out,” Zac said, thudding a fist against the door.

“Pray!” Angelo suggested. “We should pray!”

“I told you,
I’m not praying
.” He grabbed the handle of the door and held it closed. He looked back over at Angelo, and that was when he saw the cat.

It appeared to step from thin air right beside Angelo. It looked lazily up at them both in turn. The animal’s fur was ragged and filthy and coming out in clumps. It was the size of a kitten, but looked to have lived through at least eight of its nine lives.

Zac and Angelo watched the cat in silence as it sat down on the floor, wagged its tail and said, “Woof.”

“
E’S FOUND ’EM,”
bellowed a voice from within the cupboard. “Toxie’s found ’em. They’re in here.”

The bedroom around them went fuzzy at the edges. Zac felt the door handle melt away in his grip as the room became wispy like smoke. Far overhead a series of powerful lights flickered on, revealing what looked like a vast empty warehouse.

Where the poster of Jesus had been there now stood demons of assorted sizes. They ranged from around twenty centimetres in height to well over two metres, and they all carried ropes or nets or baseball bats with nails through them. The smallest demon seemed to be the brains of the outfit.

“There they is,” he sneered, hopping up and down on spindly, frog-like legs. “There they is!” He scratched the cat behind the ears. It involved standing on tiptoes. “Who’s a good Hellhound? Who’s a good Hellhound? Toxie is. Toxie is!”

“Hellhound?” said Zac. “That thing’s supposed to be a dog?”

The little frog-demon ignored the question. “Thought you could give us the slip, eh?” he asked, glaring tiny daggers at Zac and Angelo. “You’re lucky we found you when we did or things could’ve gotten right messy.”

The monstrous group parted as another figure stepped from thin air directly behind them. This demon was the largest of the lot. There was something different about him too. Something about the way he stood that said he was someone you really ought to be paying attention to. The smallest demon fired off a perfect salute as the newcomer stepped over him.

The stench of death and burning flesh caught at the back of Zac’s throat as the demon stopped in front of him. “This is them?” the monster demanded.

“Yeah, that’s them, Mr Haures, sir,” nodded the little one. “Told you we’d catch ’em. It was Toxie here what did—”

Haures clicked his scaly fingers. There was a brief scream and the little demon vanished in a plume of angry flame. “Shut up,” said Haures absent-mindedly.

The big demon looked down at Murmur asleep on the floor, and shook his head in annoyance. He turned his gaze on both boys. His lips drew back into an approximation of a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he told them. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.”

“Wh-who are you?” Angelo stammered.

Haures fixed him with a fiery stare. He said nothing for a while, as if contemplating the question.

“You will find out soon enough,” he said at last. Turning away, he motioned to the larger members of the demon group. “Take them down to ten,” he instructed. “
Carefully
. Anyone harms them and they will answer to me.”

The other demons nodded hastily, bowing low as Haures swept past. There was a collective sigh of relief from them as he vanished into thin air. A moment later, he reappeared again.

“Oh, and notify the Master,” he ordered. “He will want to see these insects for himself.”

“Watch who you’re calling an insect,” Zac warned.

With a twitch of irritation, Haures snapped his fingers again. Something went
pop
inside Zac’s head. He felt his ankles wobble, then his knees buckle. He probably felt the floor as he crashed down on to it, but he couldn’t say for sure. Zac’s eyes closed. The voices of the demons and the screams of Angelo sounded far away along a tunnel.

The last thing he heard before he surrendered to unconsciousness was the mad barking of the flea-bitten cat.

A jet of water woke him up. It was warm and smelled unpleasantly sour. He really hoped that it
was
water, but he had his doubts.

Spluttering, he looked up. A hunchbacked creature with too few eyes and too many teeth leered as it squirted murky yellow liquid at him from a plastic bottle. “He’s awake,” the demon said, in a surprisingly feminine voice.

She gave the bottle another squeeze, spraying Zac with more of the copper-coloured liquid. He tried to make a grab for it, but discovered his hands were shackled to a steel frame above his head. He tried to move his feet, but thick chains held those in place too.

He heard a whimper from his right and saw that Angelo was chained up exactly as he was. The boy’s eyes were closed, but his head was moving, as if he were just waking up too.

Zac quickly glanced around the room, trying to get his bearings, but he was somewhere he had never seen before. The room was a stark, clinical white, with stainless steel worktops lining the walls on every side. There were no windows that he could see, and no doors, either. No way in or out.

A chair stood in the middle of the room, like something from a dentist’s surgery – reclined fully back with a movable spotlight mounted above it. Zac wished he hadn’t spotted the straps and buckles on the armrests, but they were the first things he had seen.

“Thank you, Eliza, that will be all.”

A man just a little taller than Angelo stepped into view. He appeared human, more or less, with only two sawn-off stumps of what must once have been horns to suggest his true nature.

The man looked to be in his late sixties, with thinning grey hair and deep-set wrinkles. He was dressed in a black suit, which may originally have been tailor-made, but which now looked a size or two on the large side. His rumpled shirt was also black. He wore the top button open, with a blood-red tie hanging loosely round his neck.

His eyes were hidden behind a pair of designer sunglasses. He had rings on almost every finger and a gold watch on his wrist that was tarnished and scuffed. The man stared back at Zac and took a long, deep draw on a cigarette.

“Who are you supposed to be?” Zac asked.

There was a loud
crack
and pain tore across his back. He cried out with the shock and the heat of it. The old man puffed on his cigarette, unflinching.

“You do not address the Dark Lord,” Haures snarled. He stepped into view, coiling his tail in his hands like a bullwhip.

Zac hissed through his teeth, breathing out the worst of the pain. “Dark Lord?” he frowned. “You mean...?” He looked the grey-haired man up and down. “Nah.”

“Silence!” Haures roared. He flicked the tail and Zac felt a wasp sting across his cheek. “And bow your head before the Father of All Lies.”

Zac groaned. “Dark Lord? Father of All Lies? What is it with you people having so many names? You’re as bad as Odin.”

Veins bulged on Haures’s neck and forehead. “I said
silence
, you worthless little—”

“Haures.”

The Dark Lord’s voice was low and calm, but it stopped Haures immediately. The cigarette butt was dropped on the floor, then ground out beneath the heel of a well-worn leather shoe.

The Father of All Lies clapped his hands slowly three or four times. “Impressive,” he said. “You succeeded in getting on Haures’s bad side. That’s something you may come to regret.”

Zac said nothing. Despite the calm voice and the unassuming appearance, everything about the man screamed
danger
. Evil emanated from him with such force that Zac almost started to believe in auras. He could sense the Dark Lord’s, all black and twisted and rotten and wrong.

“Wh-where are we?” coughed Angelo, fully wakening. “Where are we? What’s happening? Who... who are you?”

“He’s Satan,” Zac said before Haures could start shouting again.

Angelo looked at the man in the suit. “Satan?” he said with a gasp. “You’re
Satan
?” He looked the man up and down. “I thought you’d be taller.”

The Dark Lord shrugged. “Not always,” he said. “My associate here is Haures. He is one of the Dukes of Hell.”

Angelo giggled sharply, then bit his lip. All eyes turned in his direction.

“Something funny?” asked Satan.

“Um, no,” Angelo said.

“Well, clearly
something
made you laugh. Would you care to share it with the rest of us?”

Angelo swallowed nervously. “It’s just... I thought you were going to say he was one of the Dukes of Hazzard.”

There was a pause. Behind his sunglasses, the Dark Lord blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“
The Dukes of Hazzard
,” repeated Angelo. From the expression on his face it was clear Satan was none the wiser. Angelo felt himself shrink beneath both demons’ gaze. “It’s an old TV show,” he said meekly, “about some people who drive fast.”

The Father of All Lies rubbed his teeth with his tongue. It made a rasping sound, like sandpaper. “
The Dukes of Hazzard
,” he said slowly. “
The Dukes of Hazzard
. Is that one of ours?”

“No, sir,” said Haures.

“Is it the one with the talking car?”

Haures cleared his throat gently. “You’re thinking of
Knight Rider
, sir.”

“Ah, yes, so I am. That was one of ours, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” confirmed Haures. “That was one of ours.”

Satan waved a hand dismissively. “Enough. You asked where you are. You are in the tenth circle of Hell. Try not to touch anything, some of the paint’s still wet.” His eyes moved behind the sunglasses, looking at them both in turn. “You’re here for the
Book of Doom
. Correct?”

“That’s right,” Zac nodded. “So if you’ll just hand it over, we’ll get out of your hair.”

“Haha, yes,” said Satan without mirth. “Very good. I’m sure you’ve already guessed that we had an ulterior motive for getting you down here. We’ve been watching you for a long time. Just between us, we never actually cared about the book. We just thought it might make good bait with which to draw you down.”

“Well, it worked,” said Zac. “But why? I don’t understand. What do you want with me?”

The Dark Lord’s head shifted just a fraction in his direction. “You?” he said. “Why would we want anything from
you
? I was talking to him.” He turned his head towards Angelo.

Angelo and Zac exchanged a puzzled glance.

“Me?”

“Him?”

“Why did you want me?”

“You are unique, Angelo,” Satan said. “One of a kind, almost certainly never to be repeated. And that makes you important. And it makes you fascinating.” He gestured around at the stark walls and spotless worktops. “All this is for you, Angelo. We built the tenth circle for you, so that we may... get to know you better. Because you are special, my boy. Half angel and – drumroll, please –
half demon
.”

“I know that,” Angelo said.

Satan missed a beat. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Do you?”

Angelo puffed out his pigeon chest. “My dad told me.”

“Ah,” said Satan. “Well, that’s disappointing. I was looking forward to revealing that.” He paced round the metal frames that held both boys, examining Angelo from all angles.

“You’ve spent such a long time up there,” he said. “Now it’s time you joined us down here for a while and indulged your dark side.”

Angelo frowned. “What?”

The Dark Lord was interrupted before he could reply by the sound of a ringing phone. Eliza, the hunchbacked demon with the liquid bottle, flipped open a handset and pressed it to her ear.

“Yes?”

She listened intently, watched by the other four people in the room. After a moment, she moved the phone away from her ear.

“It’s the fourth circle, sir. About the hot pokers. They’re asking should they go through the eyes or up the bottom?”

Satan tapped a finger against his chin as he considered this. “Why not both?”

The hunchback nodded, spoke the instruction into the phone, then snapped it closed.

“Where was I?” Satan asked. He rocked back on his heels. “Ah, yes. Put him in the chair.”

At that, everything seemed to grind into slow motion. Zac saw Haures lunge for Angelo, heard Angelo cry out in panic and fear. Shapes moved in the corners of Zac’s eyes. He turned and saw a dozen or more demons in surgical clothing swarming towards the reclining chair. Had they been there the entire time, or was there a door behind him? A way out? An escape route? He twisted his neck, trying to see, but all he saw was white wall and silver worktop, and all he heard were Angelo’s squeals as Haures unhooked him and carried him over towards the chair.

“What are you doing with him?” Zac cried. He pulled at his chains, but they held fast. “Let him go. Leave him alone.”

Angelo was bucking and thrashing in Haures’s arms, kicking out with his bare feet and biting at anything that came within reach. He shouted angrily. He pleaded and sobbed. He tried everything he could to stop them putting him in that chair, but then he was on it, and then he was strapped in, and then he was trapped.