The Demonata #10: Hell's Heroes (21 page)

I try to save the ex-soldier, extending my magic to him, working to nullify the acidic snot. But the demon blocks my attempt and chortles sadistically as Shark splatters into hundreds of pieces, all of which dissolve away to a gooey mess within seconds.

I stare at Shark’s remains, dazed that this can be happening so swiftly, so effortlessly. I thought if we failed, we’d go down valiantly after a brutal, gallant fight. But we’re being squashed like ants. This is ridiculous. When did the rules change and why did nobody warn us?

“Bec,” Kernel growls, gripping my hand tightly. “We have to grab her.”

“What for?” I wheeze, face ashen, watching the demons rip the Disciples and the mages to pieces. I see the last of the werewolves die in howling torment. One of the demons picks up its carcass and wiggles it around like a finger puppet.

“We can still destroy the tunnel,” Kernel hisses.

I stare at him. I’m supposed to be the one with the never-say-die attitude. When I became a wolfen half-human, I put caution aside and became a one-dimensional beast who didn’t know the meaning of surrender. I should be the guy coming out with crazy, suicidal plans. But I’m frozen in place, more vulnerable and helpless than I ever was before.

“If we push Bec into the mouth of the tunnel, we can explode her and use the force of the explosion to shatter the rock,” Kernel continues, impossibly composed under the circumstances. “We might die too, but at least we’ll buy the world some time. And maybe we can protect ourselves from the blast, live to fight another day.” He shrugs. “Either way, it’s our only hope.”

I nod slowly, then with more determination, regaining control. “Aye,” I grunt, mimicking the dead Beranabus. “And maybe there aren’t any lodestones as strong as this one. If we drive this lot back, they might never be able to cross again.”

We share a look that says,
“Riiiiiiight!”

Kernel grins. “To the death, Master Grady?”

“To the death, Master Fleck,” I grin back.

Then we both say together, “But not ours!”

Laughing, we dart across the cave, dodging the warring humans and demons. Kernel’s feet slip in the blood and slime that covers the floor, but my claws and hairy soles are suited to gripping. I steady him and we push on at a good pace.

Bec spots us closing in on her and smiles, spreading her arms as if welcoming us home after a lengthy absence. Lord Loss straightens beside her and snarls. “You should not dare—” he begins, but we’re on them before he gets any further.

I leap, using all the power in my legs, and smash into Lord Loss, sending him hurtling against the wall of the cave again. Bec tuts and turns to deal with me. She considers me the prime threat and studies me warily, forgetting about the other third of the Kah-Gash.

Kernel takes advantage of Bec’s momentary lapse. He sneaks up behind her and sends volts of magic frying through her brain. She cries out and jerks away from him, arms, legs, and head spasming madly. Lord Loss gasps with concern and reaches for her. I drive a hairy elbow into his ugly face, then fall on Bec and pound her as if she was a human drum. I could pop her head like a grape if I tried, but I don’t want her dead. Not yet.

The shadows around Bec respond sluggishly, feebly whipping at Kernel and me, nowhere near as effective as they were before. It seems Death limited itself by uniting with Bec. As part of the girl, it suffers if she does. It can’t defend itself as ably as it could when it had a body of its own.

Lord Loss hisses savagely and throws himself at us, arms lashing out, snakes darting from his chest, spitting venom as they fly at our faces. One catches my left eye and sinks its fangs in. My eye bursts and liquid soaks my cheek. I roar loud enough to shake a house. I never thought losing an eye could be so traumatic. No wonder Kernel hated me so much after I put him through twin doses of this.

Kernel tries his old vomiting trick, hitting Lord Loss with a spray of puke that turns to acid, like the snot that finished off Shark. But the demon master has seen Kernel in action before, and he’s prepared. He freezes the vomit and it falls away in a thin, brittle sheet, to shatter on the floor.

But the vomit distracts the heartless monster and buys us a couple of seconds. Steeling myself against the pain, fighting the disorientation, I grab Bec and lob her at the mouth of the tunnel. As she lands at the base of the lodestone, I leap after her. Kernel scurries along behind me, unleashing bursts of energy at Lord Loss to slow him down.

The walls of the tunnel are vibrating again. It’s still widening. In a few minutes, more demons will be free to cross. I hear their excited cries echoing from the universe at the far end. I recall the army we faced when we went in search of Beranabus’s soul and flash on a picture of thousands of demons pouring into this cave, obscuring us all, forcing Timas to press his button on the cliff above. Whether nuclear bombs or the crossing demons destroy the planet, it’s definitely doomed. Unless…

I pick up Bec and stagger into the pulsing mouth of the tunnel. She stirs in my arms, then squeals and strikes me with blasts of fire. The flames rip up my arms and lick my face, burning my hairs to the roots, then eating deeply into my flesh.

I ignore the pain and focus on Bec. I feel Kernel draw up next to me, then his magic links with mine and we pour it into the struggling girl. I want her to explode in geysers of flesh, bone, blood, and magic. For a moment, as her flesh ripples, I think we’re going to succeed. But then she smiles and stops struggling. Our magic flows into her, but instead of bursting through her, it circles within the girl, then returns to us, stronger than before, but having caused no harm.

I try again, but although I pump more power into her than I did the first time, it doesn’t hurt Bec, just comes back at me with interest. Lord Loss settles beside me and lays a couple of arms across my shoulders. I glare at him, but he doesn’t strike, merely smiles wickedly.

“What’s happening?” Kernel yells as more and more energy builds between and around us.

“Time to unleash the full power of the Kah-Gash,” Bec gurgles, her teeth red with blood from the pounding she took.

“She’s using us,” Kernel screams, trying to pull away but held in place by the magic that continues to build. “Kill her, Grubbs, kill her!”

I try, but I can’t focus. At least not on Bec. I sense the power fanning out, the Kah-Gash taking over as it did in Carcery Vale when it sent us back into the past and gave us the opportunity to defeat the Demonata. But things are different now. Bec’s working for the enemy. There’s no telling what will happen this time.

I have to stop this. The Kah-Gash is the ultimate weapon. Our world will fall, no matter what, but if Bec gets her hands on the Kah-Gash, she can annihilate the rest of the universe too. If the best we can do is deny them that victory, we’ll have to settle for that.

I start to cut off the power flooding through me, to thwart Bec’s plan. But just as I’m about to take my finger off the trigger, Bec catches my eye and…
winks.

The wink unnerves me. It didn’t look like a mad, victorious, mocking gesture. Bec looked like her old self for a split second. It was a playful wink, the sort you tip to a friend when you have a secret, mischievous plan. The type that says, “Trust me and play along. This’ll be fun!”

It’s crazy. I should stop this, as I intended. Too much is at stake to gamble recklessly. But the promise in that quick wink… the spark of humanity I thought I saw lurking behind the shadowy veils of Death…

With a desperate, confused, horrified howl, I make what’s probably the worst decision of my entire life, or anyone else’s. Instead of freeing myself from the clutches of Bec and Lord Loss, I draw even more power from the air, giving the Kah-Gash all the kick it needs to flare into life and wreak universal havoc.

With a sudden, sickening lurch, a ball of raw, all-consuming energy bursts from every pore of my body. Similar balls explode from Kernel and Bec. The three parts of the Kah-Gash join, sizzle in the air, then strike hard at the heart of the tunnel to hell.

Everything hits the fan.

W
E
needed words when we previously unleashed the full power of the Kah-Gash, spells to direct it. Not this time. We’ve moved beyond that. Grown, matured, fused completely with the weapon. There’s no pulsing sky, clouds bursting into flames, melting rocks. Instead we skip straight to the exploding-into-colors stage.

My body shreds and I know instinctively that I’ll never have a use for it again. Grubbs Grady is dead and gone. So are Kernel Fleck and Bec. We’re the Kah-Gash now, a bodiless force, purer than light, free of all constraints. We didn’t go this far the first time. We didn’t understand what was happening. We tried to fight the loss of control, the madness. Now we just swing with it, leaving our humanity behind, bursting forward at a speed I can’t begin to describe.

We smash through the tunnel, the world shattering behind us, the Disciples and the mages dead in an instant, Timas on top of the cliff a moment later, everyone on Earth a second after that. The planet rips apart as Juni predicted, and I’m to blame. But I don’t care. I’m caught up in the moment, crazy with power, oblivious to everything except the rush of the
now,
the
here,
the
us.

We’re in a subuniverse of billions of flashing patches of light. We careened from one to another when we entered this realm before, but now the transition is fluid. Patches join and form windows. We shoot through without pause, picking up speed, the windows becoming a blur, sucking the remains of the world after us… other planets… stars… the universe… all matter… even time itself. And not just the human universe—we take from the Demonata’s realm too. Everything is sucked along in our wake.

A voice whispers, “The Crux.” It takes me a few seconds to realize it was Bec who spoke. It seems our individual selves still exist on some kind of level. We’re not entirely the single entity I thought we’d become.

“The Crux,” Bec says again, insistently.

“Why?” Kernel asks.

“I’ll explain later. Just direct us there.”

“But if we go to the Crux and take everything with us…”

“Trust me,” Bec says. “This is the only way. Bran hatched a plan.”

“Grubbs?” Kernel asks, still uncertain.

I’ve no idea what’s going on, what the
plan
might be, if Bec’s really on our side or playing us for laughs? But what choice do we have? “Make it so,” I mutter in my best Captain Picard voice.

Kernel sighs. I get the sense that we’ve adjusted our position. Our speed increases, the windows becoming a buzz of white light, noise building around us, drowning everything out, making it impossible for us to talk to one another.

I have a bad feeling about this, but it’s too late to stop, so I continue supplying power to the Kah-Gash. I take it from the lights and everything behind us, draining the universes dry, using energy, magic, time, and all the rest to propel us forward faster. Kernel’s guiding us. Bec… I’m not sure what the spirit of the Celtic girl is up to, but I get the impression that she’s busy too. Her mind seems to be focused on the flotsam behind us. She’s absorbing
something
from the spiraling remains of the universes. Not energy or magic. But what else could it be?

Before I can pursue the query, a fiery ball materializes in the distance. From Kernel’s description, I recognize it as the Crux, the center of all things, the place where the Big Bang happened. There was only one universe originally, sixty-four zones, half black, half white, demons in the white zones, Old Creatures in the black. No other life-forms. No time either. During a war between the demons and the Old Creatures, it exploded, creating life and the universes as we know them.

We shoot through the rim of the Crux. Kernel said it was the hottest place he’d ever been, but there’s nothing hotter than us right now.

There are sixty-four giant square panels floating around the lightning-pierced heart of the Crux. Clustered around them are balls of light—the Old Creatures—and enormous demons even more powerful than the masters in the cave. These are the original Demonata, those who existed before the new universes were born.

The Old Creatures and the demons react with shock as we tear into the Crux. Panic-stricken, they try to mount a defense of the giant panels. But we swat them aside and they’re torn to pieces by the trailing vortex, sucked in and ripped apart like all the others, perishing with a chorus of confused howls.