God, how I wanted to unload Hellseeker into this monster. If I could just find a way to break my paralysis…
“That’s far enough, demon,” Celeste said. Morgal had almost reached the altar.
“You dare tell me what to do?” Morgal said. “Your soul belongs to me, mortal.”
“I offer a trade, mighty Morgal.”
“What is this foolishness, child? You want to cheat me out of a contract?”
“Not cheat, master. Offer better terms.”
Celeste held up the Soul Dagger and the demon stopped his approach. The light in the ebony skull’s eye sockets flickered, as if he was blinking in surprise.
Morgal might be powerful, but he wasn’t all-knowing. This was an unexpected turn of events for the demon. I could only hope that it would help me in the long run, but at the moment I didn’t see how.
“The dagger contains the souls of my half-brothers, and I’m willing to add this waste of space,” she pointed at her father, “if it sweetens the deal. They can all be yours, Lord of Lords, Master of Magicians, Duke of Hell. Four souls in exchange for my own.”
“What stops me from taking the dagger and your soul too?” the demon retorted.
I had been asking myself the same question. Celeste was playing a dangerous game.
“Only the person who took these lives can release them from the blade. If you want them, you need me.”
Morgal considered Celeste’s words. “How do I know if you’re telling the truth? You could be bluffing about the dagger.”
She shrugged and held out the Soul Dagger. “Feel free to inspect the blade.”
Morgal reached out a skeletal hand across the altar. Desmond Horne squirmed between them, Morgal’s inhuman shadow falling over his face.
Celeste passed Morgal the dagger, and the demon studied the ornately carved handle. Blue forks of lightning danced over the blade as it made contact with the beast.
“Do you believe me now?” Celeste said.
“You speak the truth, yet this bargain holds little appeal to me,” Morgal said. “These souls were already tainted and hellbound. How can you claim to give me what is already mine?”
Celeste’s eyes flicked toward me. The negotiation was slipping away from her.
I had suspected the demon might react like this from the start. Celeste would have been better off murdering innocent people beyond Hell’s reach, like the Berlin Ripper had done. But she had allowed herself to be blinded by her hunger for vengeance. Denied her father’s love and attention all her life, she’d targeted the siblings who’d never had to suffer the way she did.
If I’d been in her place, I’d have found some nuns or orphans to offer up. Barring that, I would try to find a specific person whose soul the demon craved. Somebody who’d really pissed off Hell. Somebody like me.
Suddenly I had a good idea where this was headed.
Celeste’s next words proved me right.
“How about I turn the blade against Raven, Hell’s biggest enemy? Imagine how your status will grow when his soul is your trophy. A knight of the light doomed to spend all eternity in darkness. With Raven out of the way, the Prince of Darkness will be able to continue his conquest unchallenged. Imagine what rewards he will grant you.”
Morgal’s eyes narrowed as they locked on me. If I made it out of this alive, Skulick and I were going to have a long talk about vetting our clients to make sure none of them were malicious, double-crossing, murder-happy thieves.
“You could kill Raven,” Celeste said. “Torture him, put him through every misery imaginable. But ultimately his body will give out. Only the blade you now hold can give you his soul.”
The demon nodded and his leathery wings flared out, casting jagged shadows against the temple walls. The skull-face had changed again, now a reptilian devil mask.
“Done,” he said. “You have yourself a deal, child. If you take the blade and strike down Hell’s greatest enemy, your soul will be spared.”
With these words, Morgal handed the Soul Dagger back to Celeste. I braced myself for the inevitable, still paralyzed, unable to raise a hand in my defense. In a way, I couldn’t even be angry with Celeste. The girl was a survivor. She would do anything to live—or so I believed. What happened next showed me that I had gotten this whole thing wrong yet again.
As soon as Morgal handed Celeste the Soul Dagger, she brought it up to her chest and drove it into her heart. Blood gushed from the wound, and her hand slipped off the dagger’s hilt. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Even Morgal appeared aghast.
Celeste collapsed on top of the altar. While I was still trying to make sense of what had just happened, Desmond Horne threw off his restraints and snatched the bloody knife from his daughter’s corpse.
The helplessness and despair was gone from his face. Despite his advanced age, this was the predatory, relentless man I’d studied back in Skulick’s loft. This whole thing had been a set-up, but what was the old man’s ultimate goal?
As this latest insight spun through my mind, Desmond Horne brought up the Soul Dagger and drove it with all his might into Morgal.
17
The blade sunk into the demon’s inhuman flesh.
For a brief yet timeless moment, reality froze, the yawning silence deafening. Morgal backed away, his reptilian expression stunned that a mere mortal would dare defy him in such an impertinent manner.
A beat later, the world sped up as Morgal’s ferocious roar shook the temple. He clutched the Soul Dagger’s ivory handle and withdrew it from his gut. The artifact clattered to the floor, the three-bladed dagger slick with the creature’s black blood.
“How dare you, mortal?” Morgal roared, his slitted eyes fixed on his new enemy. “I’ll make you suffer like no member of your species has ever…”
Morgal broke off as a series of tremors tore through his body. His whole form began to tremble and shake. The red-black eyes turned a sickly white, and streamers of spectral light enveloped his form.
Desmond Horne rose from the altar and surveyed his handiwork with a look of deep satisfaction. For the first time, I wondered who I should fear more: Morgal or Horne?
My eyes shifted back to my parents’ killer. In the violent display of light flickering around the demon, I made out human shapes and faces.
Understanding slashed through my mind. I was looking at the spirits of the three Horne brothers as well as Celeste. Desmond Horne had released their trapped souls when he stabbed Morgal with the Soul Dagger. The spirits were now inside the demon, battling over control for the monster’s form.
His inhuman physique reared and bucked. As he stumbled down the temple’s nave, giant wings sliced the air and tentacles lashed out furiously, knocking over pews. The demon’s monstrous limbs did not move under his orders any longer. The puppeteer had become the puppet—but who was in the driver’s seat?
The souls of Horne’s children were battling it out to see which one would control the demon. Horne himself just watched, cold and calculating, as Morgal fought against their attempts at possession.
What game was the Desmond Horne playing here?
Morgal roared in fury and pain as the four souls pulsed around him, becoming a blazing tornado of supernatural light. The demon could’ve easily crushed one soul foolish enough to attempt such an impossible feat, but four seemed to be enough to give him a challenge.
My mind was reeling. Had Desmond Horne sacrificed his children because he believed their souls could successfully take control of the beast? I doubted very much that would work so what did the old man hope to gain?
Morgal dug a clawed reptilian fist into his glowing chest. An instant later, the talons emerged from his body, now clutching a squirming ghost. It was Eric Horne’s spirit form.
The demon popped the spirit’s head like a balloon, fragments of screaming ethereal energy dispersing throughout the unholy temple.
One soul down, three more to go.
I sensed this struggle wouldn’t go on for muc
h longer. Four human spirits weren’t powerful enough to possess a demon for any length of time. Already, Morgal was reasserting control. The outcome of this battle was a foregone conclusion. Desmond Horne had miscalculated, and his gambit would fail within the next few minutes as the souls of his children were defeated.
I eyed the old man. His features were still calm and composed, but a flicker of triumph in his narrowed gaze gave me pause. What was the old devil up to?
As if to provide an answer to my question, Horne began to recite an ancient prayer. An arcane magical circle lit up around the altar. A series of glyphs appeared inside the circle, previously invisible to the naked eye.
The demon tore another one of the attacking souls from his heaving body and shredded it. Robert Horne’s spirit mouthed a silent scream as the demon’s incredible power tore his soul apart.
Only Celeste and Garbriel remained, their spirits flickering dimly inside the demon’s struggling form. They were growing weaker. As their ranks had thinned, their struggle intensified.
Horne’s voice rose as he chanted, swelling with power. A second magic circle ignited around Morgal, identical to the one Desmond Horne stood in. More arcane symbols grew visible, both inside the circle as well as the walls and ceiling of the underground temple.
That’s when I finally understood what was happening. I’d been wrong about everything. So very, very wrong.
This isn’t a place of worship, I realized. It’s a trap.
Celeste Horne’s soul had been the bait to lure the demon into this temple. And the four souls were meant to both distract Morgal and steer him into the previously invisible magical circle. Horne had never believed his kids could defeat the demon. Their deaths were just another part of his game.
Morgal was coming to the same conclusion. “What is this?” the demon cried as he pulled Celeste’s soul from his mouth and crushed her in his clawed hands. I got one final look at the femme fatale who’d played me from the start. There was no fear in her eyes as her soul perished, only an expression of ecstatic triumph.
Celeste had lied to me on so many levels. She’d never been the disowned bastard child out for revenge. The dark devotion expressed in her final moments spoke volumes. She had been a loyal servant, dedicated to carrying out her father’s plans. I was witnessing the culmination of a long con that had lasted more than two decades.
While these thoughts cycled through my mind, Morgal tried to escape from the magical circle by hurtling himself against its borders with all his might. There was a crackle of mystical energy, and blue-green forks of electricity arced as the invisible force field repelled the beast.
Even a demon couldn’t overcome Desmond Horne’s spell.
“What have you done, human?” Morgal demanded to know.
Desmond Horne offered no answer as his chant built into a raw-throated cry. I made out snippets of Latin and Aramaic but the nature of the spell eluded me.
The two magical circles changed color, the white light turning an electric blue as Desmond Horne’s occult ritual hit its crescendo. Blinding rays of light licked the air. Under normal circumstances I would have shielded my gaze from the furious light, but my paralysis forced me to keep watching.
Supernatural energy washed over the demon’s monstrous features, the eerie light flooding his mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, saturating his scaly skin. Morgal slumped to his knees, his monstrous head hunched forward, a Duke of Hell bested by a mere mortal.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it.
The violent bursts of magical energy dispersed in a final blinding flash.
Reality was back to normal.
Well, almost normal.
The magical circle around Morgal still pulsed with a steady red light. I still struggled to grasp the point of this ritual. What had Horne hoped to accomplish here? The demon might be dead, but after everything he’d done, Horne’s soul was most assuredly doomed to an eternity in Hell regardless.
The cry of absolute horror that followed was my first clue. This time, the pitiful scream hadn’t originated from the demon but from Desmond Horne. The old man was on his knees, mirroring Morgal’s expression of defeat. The circle around the altar shone with the same muted crimson energy as the circle ringing the demon.
“No, it can’t be. This is impossible!” Horne cried in despair.
Had Horne’s spell misfired? Had he spent the lives of all his children for nothing? I still struggled to make sense of the old man’s intentions and the nature of his crazy ritual. If Skulick had been here, he would have figured it out.
Desmond Horne stared in abject horror at the demon’s slumped body and then his own limbs, his wild-eyed gaze darting back and forth at a frantic tempo.
“What have you done, mortal?” he asked, his voice cracking.
The demon’s head lifted then, and it began to laugh.
I finally grasped what had happened here, what Desmond Horne had been after all along. The old bastard had indeed achieved his goal.
As Morgal stumbled erect, triumphant laughter bursting from the hideous maw rimmed with razor-sharp teeth, I knew. And so did the pitiful old man trapped inside the magical circle surrounding the altar.
Except, of course, that the old man was no longer Desmond Horne.
Somehow, he had managed to switch bodies with the demon.
Morgal’s soul was now trapped inside the frail, sagging anatomy of a seventy-year-old man while Desmond Horne controlled the demon’s mighty form.
Neither Hell nor Earth would ever be the same again.
18
Since the beginning of time, men had dreamt of becoming gods.
To someone like Desmond Horne, turning into a demon was the next best thing.
The demon aimed its terrifying gaze at me. The wings unfurled as it took an unsteady step, Horne’s soul still learning how to operate the monstrous anatomy.
He was getting the hang of it fast.
“Do you finally understand?” the Horne demon said. “Has your pathetic little brain caught up?”
I understand that you’re a madman, I thought, still incapable of forming words.
“If you lose, you’re a madman. If you win, you’re a visionary genius,” the Horne demon retorted in response to my thoughts.
And he can read minds. That’s just fantastic.
“I will make you pay for this, Horne!” Morgal screamed inside Horne’s body.
The Horne demon turned toward his former self. “Choose your words carefully, Morgal. You know how sensitive human nerve endings are to pain.”
“My master will never let you get away with this!” Morgal said, rage mixing with mounting panic. “Hell will see through this deception and the Prince of Darkness will punish you for your boldness.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Horne conceded. “But I don’t intend to deceive anyone. Hell will know what I’ve accomplished. The Prince of Darkness won’t shed any tears over a demon foolish enough to be tricked by a human. Especially when I hand them Raven’s soul on a platter.”
It made a sick kind of sense. Desmond Horne would buy his way into Hell’s aristocracy using my soul as his currency. His plan was so audacious that it just might work.
From the furious expression on Morgal’s wrinkled features, the demon had come to the same conclusion. His fury drove him to try stepping out of the magical circle. Energy sizzled, and he bounced back as if he had run into a concrete wall. The demon collapsed, out for the count.
“I can’t image what poor Morgal must be going through,” the Horne Demon said. “To trade such power for my old, broken body…it must be like being buried alive in a coffin made of flesh and bone.”
The Horne demon regarded me and the paralysis lifted slightly. I could feel my face again, and my lips immediately formed words.
“How long…were you…planning this?” I said, still struggling to form words. My tongue felt sluggish, and my mouth was painfully dry.
“Since my s
weet, loyal Celeste was born,” he said.
Since you had my parents murdered, I mentally added.
“Twenty-one years ago, I was secretly using my cult to expand my business operations. My followers would infiltrate the companies of my greatest competitors, causing them to thrive or fail on my orders. Your father and his partner knew something was up and were closing in on my operation. I was at a crucial phase. My power and influence were growing, but a couple of idealistic do-gooders could’ve ruined it all.”
“So you conjured Morgal and got him to kill my mother and father.” My voice trembled with emotion.
“Yes,” Horne said without a trace of remorse. “I assumed that if one of the demon hunters was dead, the other would stop chasing me. I thought that targeting the family man would be more effective, so your father’s fate was sealed.”
Rage burned inside of me, and my heart hammered with hatred.
“In a way, I ought to thank your father. The moment I first laid eyes on Morgal, everything changed. I finally understood that my earthly ambitions paled in comparison to the demon’s power. A new idea took root inside of me, an idea that would dominate the next two decades of my life. What if I could become a demon myself? With your father and his partner out of the picture, my worldly empire grew, but it meant nothing to me anymore. No matter what I achieved on this mortal plain, death would come for me sooner than later. But if I could become a demon, I would be eternal. Far better to serve in Hell than to rule on Earth, don’t you think?”
The bastard thought he was being cute by riffing on the classic line from Paradise Lost. I concentrated on broadcasting the worst insults and curse words I could think of in Horne’s direction. If he really could read my thoughts, then he’d know exactly what I thought of him.
The Horne demon’s lips crinkled into a sharp-toothed smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I never felt like I belonged to this world; the dirt, the blood, the sweat and tears seemed beneath me. My body a flawed vessel doomed to shrivel and perish. Becoming a demon would be the ultimate act of transcendence, pulling myself up from the muck and leaving this crude matter behind for something far more glorious.”
Shadow Detective Supernatural Action Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (Shadow Detective Boxset) Page 11