Monstrous- The Complete Collection

by Sawyer Black

  The guns spun into silence, and both men ducked back inside.

  Henry felt slow. His thoughts slogging through mud. He shook his head, but the haze over his eyes clung to him like gauze over his face.

  Are they reloading?

  Are they done?

  Swirling balls of energy like the ones coming down the hill in front of the Viazo Grand roared at the vehicles. Probably the same magic that had killed Ezra as Henry ran for his life with Adam in his arms.

  The hatches slammed shut just before the direct impact of energy, and Henry caught flame and heat against his chest, but the vehicles fared as well as last time. The asphalt cracked. Black chunks and dark dust rising into the impact’s wake. The hatches popped back open, and Howser and Weego opened fire again.

  Nadia pushed Henry around the outside of the vehicle and dragged him into a stumbling run.

  He couldn’t think past the noise.

  Grit in his eyes.

  Lights flashing through his eyelids.

  Panicked thoughts of the Ravagers as they died.

  His senses were overloaded. Motivation frozen by his inability to decide on a course of action.

  Nadia’s claws dug into his arm, and her raptor’s cry tore through his ear. Henry ducked away from her voice.

  A Ravager with bandoleers crossed over his chest ran at them from the edge of the trees, skirting the guns’ reach. He held a pistol in each hand like Billy the Kid, and he grinned with brown teeth, his eyes showing white all around. Henry felt hands at his shoulders. Fingers tangling in his shirt, pulling him out of the Ravager’s path.

  Henry’s feet collided and his knees gave out. He tipped over, his arms held out straight in front of him. His palms scraped the road, and the impact jarred his jaw shut with a clopping bite that caught his bottom lip between his teeth. Black blood glistened like syrup as it stretched through a line of drool that traced the ground like a snail trail.

  He looked up from under his brows, and the lights burst over his head like flashing neon in a darkened casino. Black lights sparkling from all the white T-shirts as the kids danced to the pulsing beat. Lasers beaming through the crowd.

  He looked into the Ravagers fevered eyes and saw his vision reflected in the man’s maniacal gaze.

  The hands still pulled. Under his armpits, digging into his ribs.

  “Henry, what is wrong with you?”

  He couldn’t tell who was talking.

  He felt eyes on his back. Staring and hateful.

  Guns belched fire as the Ravager pulled the triggers over and over.

  Henry looked away from his attacker, snaking his head through the thick air. Windows on the second floor were blazing.

  A dark figure stood in the center of a square of glass. Robed with his hands behind his back. Outlined by light. Even across the distance of the battlefield, their eyes locked.

  Henry stared into Pastor Owen’s gaze, and his muscles turned to pudding.

  The noise around him grew to the screaming rush of his own blood in his ears.

  His vision dulled to a dirty gray.

  The Ravager hit him with every bullet he fired.

  Chapter Thirty

  He felt the impact, but no pain. Somebody screaming through the pounding in his head.

  A cruel hand on his ankle. The ground dragging against his back.

  Henry opened his eyes, and colors streaked by. Swirling clouds above that. Faint light at the reaches of his vision.

  Deep vibrations through his bones.

  The colors wheeled and danced, forming shapes in his imagination, like gazing at clouds on a hill.

  That one’s a giraffe.

  Trees slid by on his left, so close they intruded on his view of a charred sky.

  Blurring shapes whipped by on his right.

  Henry pushed his chin into his chest, rolling his eyes down his body. Seeping holes spreading black blood through his shirt. One leg rising from the ground to end in the grip of the Ravager with the Old West rig.

  Henry dropped his head and drew a breath that tasted like salt and mud.

  The sluice of wet earth beneath him changed to flat and the symphony of battle stayed behind him. The block wall loomed ahead, its second story window still blazing with light and power. Pastor Owen with his face against the glass, watching Henry disappear into the front door.

  The interior was dark. Grease and gasoline. Dust and ashes.

  Henry’s head bounced against the stairs on their way up, and his sinuses filled with blood.

  A tight squeeze through a doorway at the top, and the ceiling turned from concrete to steel. Old signs hung from rusty trusses. Vintage gas and oil. Automobilia. The kind of crap the American Pickers always found in a New England barn.

  The light at the end of the room brightened as they neared. From blue to orange. Dancing and cheery, like a log cabin’s fireplace. Heat swept across the floor, drying his lips and the blood crusting around his nostrils.

  The Ravager let go of his ankle, and Henry’s boot slapped on the floor, the echoes louder than the dying sounds of the conflict outside.

  Footsteps scraping away. The squeal of metal chair legs, and the grunt of someone sitting after a long time on their feet.

  “Please join us, Henry.”

  The pastor’s voice washed over him like the rolling waves of the ocean. Holding Henry in place, then lifting him up. Crashing against him.

  Henry rolled to his side and pushed off the floor without meaning or wanting to. He stood and steadied himself on the back of a metal chair in front of an iron table set for six. Sparkling white plates and silver cutlery. Crystal glasses. Servers and bowls. All empty. A woman sat at the end of the table. Blindfolded and gagged. A bloody bandage on her arm.

  Samantha.

  Henry smiled at the sight of her. A tightness around his chest, being so close, yet unsure how he was going to save her.

  He pulled the chair out and slid to his seat, leaning forward on his elbows to stare at his wife.

  “Thank you, Henry.”

  Henry turned, and Pastor Owen left the window. He walked to stand behind Samantha, opened his robe, and let it fall to the floor behind him.

  He crossed behind her and stood in front of an iron frame full of Hell. The burning light glistened off the sweat on his chest, his tattoo shining as if glowing bugs tracked the ink under the surface of his skin.

  The Ravager tipped his chair back and slung his boots onto the table. The place setting jangled from the impact. He popped the wheels on his guns, and the brass cartridges scattered the light as they tinkled to the floor. Fingers black with mud and blood fished fresh rounds from the belts across his chest.

  The pastor moved up to Samantha’s back. He slid the blindfold from her eyes, dragging hair across her face. He leaned in and whispered, “As promised. Here is what your Henry has become.”

  Her eyes widened, and she rocked back into the chair, tears streaming down her cheeks. Henry could tell she could see the monster, and the last of Henry’s will poured into the floor. He hung his head over his shining plate and stared into the eyes of his reflection.

  Hate and anger roiled under the surface. Screaming and wailing defiance ready to burst into rage, but he could only shrug and nod. He looked up from under his brow, directly into her shaking horror.

  “Hey, babe.”

  Pastor Owen smiled. Proud that his patient had come so far. Samantha shuddered under his hands as he rubbed her shoulders. Rocking from her sobs.

  Something inside Henry begged him to look away. He tore his gaze from her face, but nothing else could satisfy his eyes. He focused on Pastor Owen’s mouth and tried to ignore her gagging cries.

  The pastor dropped his hands from Samantha’s shoulders then leaned back, still smiling. “We have come so far. Right to the finish of things, I think. I have made a few recent deals that have changed the terms of our victory, but it will be a victory nonetheless. Thank you, Henry.”

  Henry shrugged again. �
��Don’t mention it.”

  The pastor nodded. “I have bound you to me. To our quest. With the one thing you loved above everything else. Your dear wife. Samantha’s blood. Hidden under the glamour you walked through on your way to revenge. I will admit, the weapons you have brought to bear against me … were unexpected. But I did expect you. A spell to bend you to my will as you entered my domain, and the bullets to drive my control into your soul, coated with the life you loved so very much.”

  The pastor lifted his arm to indicate the Ravager sitting with his arms crossed, his bored expression at odds with the fever of battle he’d shown in the trees. Henry shook his head and thought back to that moment.

  Was someone else there?

  The pastor snapped and Henry left his memory, sitting up straight like a schoolboy caught in a daydream.

  “His name is Blane. Son of Botis. Part of the agreement I’ve made with my new dealings with Hell. I knew him from when I started my quest. He aided me when I needed my church destroyed. Once, to kill the spirit of its people. A massacre that killed many children. And once, to kill its body with fire. It was all for you, Henry.”

  Owen lifted his hands, the palms glowing with red fire. The flames behind him rippled, and a hot wash blew across the table. He balled his hands into fists, and Henry hissed in pain.

  Searing heat from the entry wounds in his chest and belly spiked and spread out, blending into a mass of agony over his heart. His muscles locked him in position. His teeth ground together. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes.

  Pastor Owen smiled. “I have been given dominion over you, Henry. You are the demon that will lead my charge. This portal into Hell remains open so you can see what you have lost, but it also shows what you yet have to gain.”

  The flames in the frame parted, and a figure of shadow stepped forward. Opalescent skin. Hairless with jet black eyes. Satan wore a crisp suit and tie, and a small figure stood before him, matching his steps as he neared the portal’s border.

  Amélie.

  The heat over Henry’s heart blossomed into an inferno of rage. He pushed against Owen’s control as if they were chains. Struggling, his voice whining in a labored rumble of agony, Henry looked into Lucifer’s eyes and was suddenly free.

  He sagged back into the chair as the eyes claimed control, removing his will to fight back.

  The devil smiled.

  “Resist me,” Pastor Owen said, “and Samantha dies. If you try to go to Hell without me, Samantha dies. If you do anything other than the work set out before you … Samantha dies. The perfect bonds for someone like you, Henry. The only thing that will truly keep you at my side.”

  The black in Satan’s eyes swirled beyond his eyelids, spreading out from his face to cover his head like a cowl.

  “And here are my generals,” Pastor Owen continued.

  Big Ben stepped out from the shadows in the corner. Dressed all in black, a shining steel pauldron over his left shoulder. Heavy plates down the arm. Demon Piercer hanging from his back.

  Petrov Obisev followed. Looking better here in Nowhere than the last time Henry had seen him. Dressed identically to Big Ben, a sword at his hip and a shotgun in his hands.

  They took their places at the table. Henry stared at Satan from the last supper he would ever have.

  With the devil’s hands on her shoulders, Amélie stood strong. Chest high and hands at her sides. Chin up and out. As the black from Satan’s eyes poured down to cover her face, filling the portal to Hell, Amélie winked.

  Listen to the pastor’s words, young son.

  Lucifer’s hissing voice rose into Henry’s thoughts, rolling and cracking through his mind. Whispering echoes pulsing in and out of the shadows.

  He has made a deal with me, but my dealing is not yet done.

  Pastor Owen spread his hands, the power pushing through his fingers leaving trails in the air as they moved. “And when the sky is blackened by the smoke of the bottomless pit, and the locusts and scorpions have had their fill, we shall leave this place with a new army that is on the move even now. You will be my commander in the sacking of Solitude, and the boy will fall victim to your claws.”

  He stepped from Samantha’s side, blocking Henry’s view of the swirling oil coating the passage to the underworld. “Or Samantha will die, and if you think her reunion with your sweet Amélie will be joyous in Hell, I can assure you, you are mistaken.”

  A voice like the crawling of centipedes through moist earth. A front divided is a front controlled.

  “They will both be tortured for an infinity of time. New degradations that have not even been imagined.”

  I do not want the pastor to rule on earth in my stead, young son.

  The inky flow of black rolled to the portal’s edges. Satan’s gaze blocked the light of Hell, and Pastor Owen’s voice boomed with his passion. "Order will be torn apart as Chaos spreads to cover humanity. We will cleanse the love of the Oppressor from the earth, and a new Order shall emerge. A new balance with me at the head and you at my side, your wife and daughter an eternal reward for your service. The prophecy will fulfill, and a new age will dawn. Henry, can’t you see it?”

  He could see Samantha’s eyes, weeping and wide with horror. Sweat rolling down the pastor’s forehead. Henry saw every bad decision he had ever made. Every selfish move. Every pain he had unintentionally caused. Henry closed his eyes, and for the first time in his life, he prayed.

  But the voice he heard in his mind was not God’s.

  Young son. Come treat with me.

  Time rolled into a moment of thought. Henry rose from his body to hover over the slowing tableau, rising and falling back as the pastor’s word made slow progress into the air. Through the wall to hang in the stairwell. Stone barely moved in his headlong rush up the stairs. Bloody and frantic, he led the way to Henry’s rescue. Teeth gleaming out of the blood. Aela at his back, covered in shining splashes of black and red.

  The frozen light of Maria’s power pushing against the shadows, Boothe hanging from her shoulder. Nadia’s raptor form snaking onto the lower landing. Frank’s Hell Hound slinging lava from its tongue. Charlie Mara’s blur as he overtook them all, and the humans, Howser and Weego staggering in the rear, facing back with weapons drawn, staring into the Ravagers coming at them from the field.

  Every eye dark and hollow with terror and exhaustion. Every wound and injury pulling them down, nearly frozen as Henry flew out into the mist. It was the final charge of friends he hardly knew. Another column of names he had betrayed to add to his list.

  As he slid over the trees, the pastor’s building receded in the distance, the wooden fort taking its place to fall away as well. Swallowed by fog and darkness. The trees ended at the cemetery. The cemetery ended at the Forgotten.

  The noise a drone of slow passage. A single note as the clocks ground over to the next second in time.

  Through the mists leading to Solitude and the armies of Hell battling the armies of Heaven yawning beneath him. Blinking lights twinkling through the battle that churned the mud and blood into a red haze that hung above the city’s walls. The fight tumbled through the halls, and Henry looked away.

  The light turned to a dirty gray as he left the Forgotten and parted the mists as he descended into Nowhere. The Tree’s beauty ached in his chest. Its sadness and fear radiating like the aroma of dying flowers.

  At its base was a table big enough for a hundred, but only four places were set at the end. Shining dishes and gleaming cutlery. A full chessboard in the center.

  Samantha’s wispy soul occupied one of the chairs. Still bound and gagged, her eyes watched him fall, the edges of her form flowing away from an unseen wind. Amélie sat across from her. The ghost of a beautiful girl, the table showing through her glowing body.

  Henry eased into the chair next to his daughter, and when he reached for her, his hands passed right through her light. Like Samantha, he was barely there.

  Satan sat forward in his chair across from Henr
y, his glossy skin shining like polished stone.

  He sat on the white side of the board, and when he steepled his fingers together, the pawn in front of his king slid forward.

  “Let us begin, young son.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Chess is a game of possibilities,” Satan said. “One could even say that it is an exercise in choices.”

  Henry remembered chess from school. Drunken parties. Under the spring shade in the park. His dismissal of a pursuit that he tried to convince himself was an unnecessary mental exercise. Really, he just didn’t understand it.

  He focused on the board. Black pieces awaiting his command. The pawn in front of his king slid forward.

  “Ah, yes. A standard response, but a solid one. An opening for the church and an agreement to deal. Shall I make an offer?”

  Satan’s knight rose from the board. From the king’s side of the line, it dropped in front of the bishop’s pawn.

  “I put in front of you, entrance into Hell.”

  Henry’s eyes slid up, but he couldn’t meet the abyss of Satan’s gaze. His eyes bounced to the side, and he pushed his fist into his belly to catch his breath. He looked back down to the board, and the pawn in front of his king’s bishop slid forward one space.

  “A timid move. Offensively useless, but it pulls your ears to my words. You are willing to negotiate. Very well.”

  The white knight rose again, wrapping the white pawn to take Henry’s man from his opening move. The black pawn turned to dust and blew to nothing.

  “Again, I will offer you entrance, but I will not release the souls in my possession out of hand.”

  Henry was no better off. He could get into Hell, but he would still have to fight for his daughter. For Adam’s mother. Unacceptable.

  With Satan’s knight unprotected, the black bishop’s pawn slid diagonally to clear the white knight from the board.

  “An assertive move, but a ploy that only opens you up for attack. It does illustrate your position, however …”