by James Hunter
“Unleash the animals!” the announcer shrieked, flapping her arms as though this were all still part of the show, even though she was fooling absolutely no one.
“Everyone,” I hissed at the few remaining inmates around me. “Things are about to get real, real crazy in here. If you want a chance at living, it’s time to go now. There won’t be any creatures waiting in those tunnels. Get out while you can.”
For a moment, none of them spoke or moved, but something on my face must’ve convinced them. The woman with the bulky battle-axe nodded and offered me a tight-lipped smile before beelining for the nearest open gate. The rest of the prisoners took a long, skeptical look at me, then reluctantly followed. A wise choice. The crowd’s restlessness grew, and in seconds the first wave of boos trickled down. Those boos grew louder and more persistent until it seemed like the Hellions on the upper deck were on the verge of rioting, but then those boos changed.
Morphed.
Transforming into screams of panic and pain as a commotion broke out in the higher levels of the stadium.
Only it wasn’t some barroom brawl, it was the beginning of the end for these shithead demons and the assorted Hellions reveling in the suffering of others. Suddenly, people in the upper ranks were fleeing as skeletal Bone Revenants flooded in, murdering anyone in their way with reckless abandon. The demons below stood, straining their eyes upward, trying to understand what was happening. But all they had to do was wait a few seconds, ’cause their turn was coming, and it was coming fast.
THIRTY-FOUR:
Distraction
A demon lord in black plate mail issued an angry warning cry as the first Tree-Rex broke through a spectator breezeway and directly into one section of the Big Wig seating. He pulled a sword, but was half a beat too slow as the Tree-Rex lunged, its enormous mouth clamping down over his horn-studded head. A spurt of blood rose from a stumpy neck, and the demon toppled, his arms still waving in the air—a reminder that demons are made of damned stern stuff.
More Tree-Rexes broke into the stands, followed by a host of other hellish creatures, all of which had been locked away in the cages below for the games. Out came giant rhino-like creatures with pebbled hides and a single twisted spike of ebony sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel. Friggin’ unicorns. A whole herd of ’em. Then there were lions the size of grizzlies, with manes of pure red flame flickering around their heads like halos. There was even a twelve-foot-tall ostrich covered in scales and sporting pointed teeth as big as steak knives.
In moments, everything was blood and chaos, screaming and madness.
Then to top it all off, Levi broke into the lower level, thirty feet from Asmodeus, careening into a tight pocket of demon lords and ladies, who’d formed into a loose defensive ring. He was impossible to miss since he was riding on top of the Bone Collector in all his ghoulish, scorpion glory. The MudMan was in his flabby gray form, and he didn’t sit. Oh no, he surfed on top of the Bone Collector, his feet planted wide, a sadistic grin stretching across his face. He had a brown leather bandolier running from shoulder to hip, and in it were a variety of small clay pots.
A lesser Hellion threw herself at the Bone Collector from the upper decks, but its wrecking-ball tail caught the unfortunate soul mid-leap, batting her through the air like a tennis ball. Levi didn’t even seem to notice. The Bone Collector continued on its rampage, claws lashing out, tail acting as a deadly battering ram, while Levi calmly pulled the pots from their pouches and took aim. He threw like a major league pitcher, and whenever a pot landed, it exploded in a shower of golden ichor, which quickly morphed into something new.
Black obsidian spikes erupted beneath the feet of a petite demoness with green skin and white hair, pinning her in place as she screamed. Another pot burst, spewing out red-hot magma, which scorched arms and legs, burning through armor like it was paper. It was amazing to watch.
But I had a demon of my own to deal with.
I ripped my eyes away from the butchery and sprinted, balls to the wall, toward Asmodeus, who was slinking away, not even putting up a pretense of battle. I skidded to a halt ten feet from the retaining wall, threw one hand forward, and unleashed a lance of violet Nox and burning Vis as thick as my wrist. The construct sliced through the air like a scalpel and slammed into Asmodeus’ back, punching a small hole in his doughy white flesh.
The Demon King roared and wheeled around, hate and rage dashing across his inhuman, serpentine features. “Who dares attack the King of Pandæmonium!” His eyes fixed on me as his lips pulled back, revealing row after row of giant shark-teeth, black with old rot.
I grabbed the helmet covering my face and tossed it to the side, staring up at him long and hard, making sure he could see me. Really see me. His gaze seemed to pin me in place, parceling me up, wheels turning as he put it all together.
“Azazel,” he cursed, hands flexing open and closed. “You did this. All of this.”
“Close enough, pal!” I yelled back at him, conjuring a fireball and letting it linger above my left palm for effect, raising my sword with the right. Playing up the dramatic reveal. “I’m here to wipe your smarmy, two-faced, self-serving bitch-ass off the face of the map, son. Pax per sanguinem is the way of Hell, partner. Prove you’re fit to rule or vacate the throne and hand over the key. Time to put up or shut up, you douchenoodle.”
I could see the uncertainty in his face—clearly, this was a demon who only liked to play if he had a sure thing—but he couldn’t turn away from me, not here and now. Sure, a lot of the top demon brass were distracted by the animal escape, but enough would see his weakness, and weakness in Hell was no beuno. Weakness brought out the jackals. If he didn’t stop me right now, the Succubus Queen would be on the throne inside a week. Still, though, he hesitated, no doubt calculating the odds.
So I did something to help decide things.
I dismissed the fireball, bent over, scooped up a handful of colosseum dirt and used a trickle of Vis to transform it into a mudball. Then I threw that mudball with every ounce of power I could muster, helping it along with a subtle working of wind.
It splattered directly across Asmodeus’ face, turning a patch of white skin goopy gray.
“Yep, a great big ol’ chicken shit, just like I’ve been telling everyone that’ll listen. Here you are, in your seat of power, and you still won’t take on little ol’ me in shitty armor with nothing more than a sword to my name and a few magic tricks.” I paused, cocked an eyebrow at him, then I said the words I knew would get beneath his skin. “The Succubus Queen was right about you. You’re a dickless, spineless loser.”
And that was it. With a maddened roar, he lurched forward like a blob of Jell-O spilling from a bowl. His tentacle legs slithered over the Imperial Podium railing and down he flopped, landing in the dirt with a thud that sent a quiver up into my legs. And his Flesh Eater pals followed, leaping down like bondage ninjas, ready to do battle. Not that I was worried about them—not with all the surprises I had waiting in the wings.
“Yeah, that’s right, shitheel, come on over here and get some.” I raised the sword in defiance, lips pulled back as he scuttled toward me with lightning speed.
Just when I was starting to get nervous, a deep, dull BOOM shook the air and rattled the colosseum hard enough to knock me off my feet. For a moment, it felt like I was standing on the back of a giant who’d just woken from a long nap and decided it was time to get up and stretch sore muscles. Then, in a blink, the floor was gone, and my stomach exploded with butterflies doing aerial drills as I fell. I saw the same shock splash across Asmodeus’ face and felt a brief surge of primal satisfaction.
Good. Time for this guy to go.
Using the Vis pumping through my body, I wove an intricate construct of air and water, infused with the strength and suppleness of Nox. A shimmering dome of shifting green—emerald to pine to jade, and back again—popped to life, encompassing me in a tight globe of power, which exerted a slight pressure against my body. The construct was a sma
ll safeguard against pointy things and an air pocket to cushion my body from the inevitable impact.
I squeezed my eye shut tight and held my breath. A second later, I smashed into the ground, my neck jerking as the force of the fall pushed the air from my chest, and sent a wave of fire into my back and ribs. The construct absorbed the brunt of the fall, but not all of it. The working, strained by the impact, popped, unleashing a torrent of powerful air that kicked up a mini dust devil in its wake. As much as I wanted to lie there groaning, I couldn’t afford to.
Nope, this was the home stretch.
I rolled onto my stomach, ignoring my pain, pushed myself upright, and took a single second to survey the scene behind me. Although we were still technically on the colosseum floor, that floor was now inside the cavernous Nekropolis, where we’d battled the Bone Collector. Damn, Levi was good. I’d been skeptical this would work, but boy did that golem know a thing or two about the ground.
Meanwhile, Asmodeus and his two goons were lying on the floor, looking completely baffled and thunderstruck by what had just happened—frankly, they looked like victims of some awful natural disaster.
Tornado Lazarus.
While they were trying to figure out what in the holy Hell had just happened and where exactly they were, I sprinted toward the cavern entryway and—more importantly—toward the unfinished section of Levi’s golden containment circle. I baseball-slid to a stop, knees biting into bone shards, and hastily grabbed at a clay pot full of ichor, which Levi had stashed near the wall. I stole another look over my shoulder. Asmodeus and his boys were moving now, slowly gaining their feet—or tentacles in the Demon King’s case.
I unstoppered the jar and tilted it to the side, splashing a bit of golden blood onto my fingertips, the metallic scent wafting up to my nose.
“What is this?” Asmodeus demanded, his voice as loud and domineering as a foghorn on an aircraft carrier. “What have you done to my colosseum?”
I ignored him, even though sweat beaded on my forehead, and my heart thundered, beating a million miles per hour. Was I gonna lock myself in here with this asshole? Almost of their own volition, my fingers closed the golden circle and scribbled the missing Hebraic symbol into place just as Levi had shown me. The instant I finished tracing out the letter, the whole world filled with a terrible buzz as the epic containment seal burst to life, golden light shooting straight up, radiating into the air.
Unlike Levi’s other containment shields, this one covered every inch of the cavern and arched fifty feet into the air, forming a flawless dome above us. And though I couldn’t see it, Levi had assured me the dome went fifty feet down as well, creating a perfect sphere, impenetrable by anything demonic—including the Flesh Eaters and yours truly. At this point, the only person who could get through the shimmering barrier of power was Levi, and he was somewhere up above, raining down holy terror and murderous justice from the back of a giant sentient scorpion.
“I’ve just evened the odds, dickwad,” I said, spinning toward the demon lord and his goons. “Now it’s just us. No backup. No escape. And instead of being in your seat of power”—I paused and glanced around—“we’re in mine.”
“Kill the usurper,” Asmodeus yelled, throwing one huge hand forward. The two Flesh Eaters shot toward me like bullets, but I just offered them a lopsided smile and made for a small pile of human skulls stacked nearby—their foreheads decorated with Sharpie, their empty eye sockets glowing with soft light. I picked one up, turned it over in my hands, then fast-balled it into a stout and powerfully built Flesh Eater with broad shoulders and rippling muscles.
The Flesh Eater’s hand flashed out to bat the incoming skull aside—
Another boom, accompanied by a blinding flash of blue-white light, filled the room as pieces of Flesh Eater rained down like gory confetti. The little skull-bombs were better than hand grenades, and since I’d stored the power inside the sigils on the foreheads, they cost me nothing to use. The next Flesh Eater changed course, zigzagging his steps. I hefted another pair of skulls from the pile and lobbed the first one. Liberty Spikes was quick as a cockroach and somehow managed to juke and spin, avoiding the devastating blast that left a scorched crater on the floor.
But I had another skull ready and waiting.
This one I pitched into his path, about four feet in front of him.
He was quick, but not quite quick enough.
That one burst too, but instead of a deadly fireball, a wave of curling, white mist flooded up like a geyser of steam. This steam bank wasn’t hot, though. Even from fifteen feet away, I could feel the finger-numbing cold as the white cloud danced and swirled. When the mist faded a moment later, Liberty Spikes was stuck and unmoving, his legs flash-frozen into worthless meat-popsicles. The creature struggled to move, but its skin was rigid and black with frostbite; no amount of wiggling was gonna fix what ailed him.
Which suited me just fine. After all, this guy had helped torch the Crossroad—he had everything coming to him and then some.
Before I could finish him off, however, a giant beam of purple fire, bigger than a sewer pipe, exploded toward me, courtesy of Asmodeus’ outstretched palm. Unfortunately for the Flesh Eater, he was directly between the Demon King and me, and that beam of searing death didn’t discriminate between friend and foe. The hapless goon went up in a sooty puff of black, and the cloying scent of burning meat wafted up. But this was Hell, I reminded myself—he’d probably walk that off given enough time.
I wouldn’t though, so I threw myself to the right, avoiding the beam and rolling back to my feet, right next to another pile of inscribed skulls.
I picked up two, one for each hand, and darted toward Asmodeus.
“We don’t need to do this,” the Demon King said as he slunk forward on his forest of fleshy tentacles. “You’ve proven yourself amazingly resilient—there is a place for you in my cabinet. Or, if you’re more ambitious than that, I could help you take out another of the Great Monarchs. Perhaps even the Morning Star himself.”
I ignored him and his bullshit speech. He was speaking out of fear—he knew how bad this looked for him. “Eat a dick,” I yelled, lobbing the first skull.
THIRTY-FIVE:
Death Shot
Asmodeus was a slow learner, because a wriggling tentacle met the skull midair; the skull exploded on contact, obliterating a chunk of flesh, leaving behind a gnarly wound, which promptly began leaking black blood all over the damned ground. The Demon King howled, unleashing a wave of Nox like a tsunami, powerful enough to take out a friggin’ dragon. Under other circumstances, I would’ve been worried. Instead, I backpedaled, pressed myself against the wall, and triggered one of the myriad of runic sigils I’d painstakingly scrawled onto the sandstone.
With an uttered word, obex, the sigil flared to life, unleashing a powerful barrier construct. A dome of shimmering blue burst from the wall, enveloping me in a bubble of protection seconds before Asmodeus’ construct landed like a wrecking ball. The waves of Nox battered against the barrier, momentarily transforming into a blazing wall of light. But though the sheer size of the Demon King’s construct was supremely impressive, it was unfocused, and quickly lost its staying power.
The flames died, and with a whisper of will, I dismissed the barrier around me, juking right as I hurled the second skull.
Asmodeus was smarter this time, conjuring a hasty force shield, similar to the one I’d just sheltered behind. The makeshift bomb exploded with exuberant force, but with the barrier in place, it did all of jack shit.
“Let’s see you stop this one, Dick-cheese,” I shouted, triggering a hundred different sigils running along the back wall, directly behind Asmodeus. The world shook as all of those offensive wards released their power in the same instant.
A freight train of raw, unseen force shot out like a giant’s closed fist, smashing into the Demon King with enough power to lift him into the air and slam him down, temporarily pinning him against the ground as incredible pressure crushed h
im like a mountain. An attack like that would’ve killed any mortal outright—flattened ’em into a pancake—but Asmodeus glowered and fought, his muscles bulging and straining against the force bearing down on him. He might have been the King of Luxury, but he was also one tough SOB.
I used the scant time I had while he was pinned down to bolt along the edge of the golden barrier, circling the cavern, heading for the small section of wall burning with soft crimson light: the storage compartment for the pistol—no, the scythe. I slipped my hand into the divot, invisible to everyone but me, and fished the hand cannon out as a surge of relief invaded my body. It was here. We’d done it. And sure, Asmodeus was still kicking, and kicking hard, but we had a chance.
I shoved the weapon into the back of my pants, then bent over and picked up another pair of skulls stashed along the wall. There was a huge thud as Asmodeus finally broke through the construct holding him down, gaining his feet like a weary prizefighter after a five-count. “I’ll strip the flesh and meat from your bones,” Asmodeus growled, turning toward me with hate written into every line of his inhuman face and body.
“Strip this, asshole,” I said, hurling another skull.
This time the Demon King didn’t even bother with a shield; the bone-bomb detonated against one of his tentacles, blowing away a wheelbarrow-sized hunk of pasty flesh. But he kept right on charging with an inarticulate roar, moving with a slithering serpent-like grace despite his tremendous size and bulk. He was hoping to maneuver me into a corner, pin me down, and use his sheer size, strength, and reach to beat the holy-living-shit outta me. And if he did pin me down, he probably would club me into a pile of goop.
I hurled the next skull—the last one within reach.
This one landed with a whomp, unleashing a golden net that burned like the noonday sun. The burning web wrapped around one of his beefy appendages and constricted like a noose, biting deeply into his skin, carving out cubes of pale meat, which fell away as he moved. That had to hurt worse than getting repeatedly shot in the groin with rubber bullets, but Asmodeus didn’t even slow down. Didn’t even seem to notice. He was focused like a laser, ready to murder me in the most painful and horrendous way possible.