“So where is it?” Tanya asked. “And how can we track it down first?”
“That’s the big one. First, we should work out which demon it belonged to. Then research him and go from there. If there’s only one final artefact unaccounted for and we’ve had no reports of demons searching for it, then . . .”
“The location is significant,” I said. “Or sensitive. Or possibly unknown.”
“I’ll get the library on to it immediately,” Cheyne said. “Good call, Giles.”
“Thank you. But I’ll be happier if we find it first.”
I sat back, my thoughts turning to Lucy. I fished out my phone and checked the signal. Our plane was equipped with some kind of signal booster and frequency jammer that enabled us to use our mobiles onboard. Belinda smiled, knowing I was hitting my daughter’s speed-dial, and I grinned back.
A father’s mind is never without worry, always attentive, unceasingly assessing everything that could go wrong. He is forever a guardian and will never rest.
The phone rang and rang, but she didn’t answer. The call didn’t go to voicemail, which probably meant that it hadn’t run out of battery. But who really knew with cellphones these days? All that technology and most of the bloody things had minds of their own. Maybe that was the idea.
I ended the call, unable to keep the disappointment off my face.
“Don’t worry.” Belinda stroked my thigh. “She’ll be fine. Hey,” her voice became a whisper, “I figured out how we can join the Mile High Club, sugar plums. You up for it?”
My attention switched to her faster than the snap of a whip. “What? Now? Seems a bit wrong with all our friends here.”
“You take it when you can,” Belinda said in that usual fatalistic tone. “Because . . . you just never know.”
Recent events hadn’t helped change her resigned-to-die-young attitude. I leaned in close.
“You’re too old to die young,” I said. “Too fast. Too good. Too bloody important.”
She smiled at me, leather pants creaking as she shifted slightly. She finger-combed the blond hair that framed her face.
“I—”
At that moment there was a cry from Cheyne, a sharp cry of pain and the faint sound of a twang as if an elastic band had been snapped close by. I stood up, grabbed the back of the seat’s headrest and leaned over the top.
“What’s up?”
Cheyne had one hand cupping her nose. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh wow, by my ribbed broomstick, that hurt.”
“What?” I cried, glancing around but seeing no enemy. “What the hell happened?”
Giles stared from Cheyne to Belinda and me with a mix of humor, shock and worry. “You would find it hard to believe if I told you.”
“My . . . nose.” Cheyne blubbered a little. “It twisted and then snapped back. As if someone bent it and then released it from a sling shot.” Her accusing eyes fixed on me. “It was you, wasn’t it? Only you would do that, Logan.”
I tried to keep the smile from my face, knowing it would only show my guilt, even though I wasn’t the culprit. It was then that I had an epiphany and my eyes went wide.
“I know who helped me.”
“What? Who?”
Natalie Trevochet stood up. “Was that proof enough for you, Witch Queen? I put it to you that the Chosen, when they die, pass on their powers to someone else, and that person is either the closest or dearest one to them. Of course, at first, the new chosen have no idea. Are you gonna ask me how I know?”
Cheyne shuffled around in her seat. “That was you?”
I stared at Johnny Trevochet’s wife, stunned. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“In the battle,” she said, “when you fought Astaroth, I thought it was adrenalin and fear. I didn’t know I’d helped you until you mentioned it. Then I performed a couple of little experiments. Nothing big. But I could feel something, a force. Now, I think it came from Johnny when he died. A gift. Or part of the prophecy, I don’t know.”
Cheyne shook her head as if trying to assimilate it. “This is big,” she said. “Bigger than you know. Because if the gifts of the Chosen are passed on then we have another healer out there. And a—well, whatever Matt Black was. It means the coven will have to spell the Text of Arcadia again to find the new Chosen.”
“Who was closest to Devon when she died?” Giles asked. “Wasn’t it Lysette? Can the Chosen have more than one power?”
I cast my mind back, struggling to remember, but failed. Too much had happened, and even now I was struggling to stay on track. Natalie had become one of the Chosen. What did it all mean?
One thing was certain, we were going to have to catch up to our enemy, fast.
TWENTY THREE
The first circle of hell was bereft of all hope. There was no freedom and no choice. No optimism. No faith. Not the faintest sense of emotion beyond despair.
Ken stuck with Felicia, sensing her misery deepening with every step. The courage it took for a free-loving, fast-running being to willingly enter this place was beyond him. It was selfless. Magnificent. Heroic.
Everything that he was not. He held no illusions. His life had been one long irresponsible free-for-all. To hold the lives and futures of countless people in his hands was beyond crazy, it was reckless, negligent. But to hold the future of the lovely, bubbly Felicia in his hands. . .
That was . . . a glorious nightmare, he thought. A marvelous hell. It filled him with all the trepidation of failure and wanting and fear. It also made him need a future. Ache for it. He would help the beautiful Lycan run free once more or die trying.
Once they’d crossed the lake and followed an obscure path down to the first hell, they finally understood Lilith’s words. That this was the true hell. All the others were mere conquered worlds left to rot and decay.
There was no wailing down here, no corpses. It was a blasted landscape, full of jagged rocks and sharp escarpments. It was black, slippery and decaying. It was crawling with malice, with unutterable evil, with unspeakable death. Lit though it was by a crimson fiery sky, that deep bloody hue served only to cast a deeper sense of malevolence across the hellish landscape. The group couldn’t walk more than a few feet without having to duck behind the nearest set of rocks or in a dirty culvert. Once, when Ken got too close to a trickling snake of water the skin of his fingers began to burn, as if close to acid, and he almost screamed.
“Might be best not to drink the local produce,” he whispered. “Pretend it’s Tunisia.”
“So long as the locals don’t get all touchy feely,” Felicia said, “I’m with you.”
The terrain worsened with every mile. Lilith was able to navigate and, when Ken took a moment to study the various rises and geographic features he realized why. Every rock was different, every mountain and hill hewn and scarred as if hammered out with an axe. Eliza’s first request upon reaching the first circle was that Lilith show them the home of Dementia, so the young girl pointed toward a high hill with a shattered structure and a twisted tree on top.
“The house on the hill,” she pointed, “is theirs.”
“And where—” Ken paused, feeling a little foolish uttering the words despite everything around him. “Where does Lucifer live?”
“The Pit is that way.” Lilith nodded to the left of the hill house. “Do you see the faint glow on the horizon?”
Ken squinted. Beneath the fiery sky he made out the weakest of distant glows, a dim hue of gold where the earth met the sky. “What is it?”
“The fires of the Pit. Sulfur. Brimstone. That is the beating heart of hell.”
Ken felt a knot of fear the size of a Buick twist in his gut. “The only good thing about it is that we might not have to go there.”
They moved on. As they climbed and then descended and then climbed again across the rolling hills and jagged rock-piles, they began to see worsening signs of desperation. Many dead and dying corpses dotted the paths. Strange looking creatures, many of them terrifying, lay in hopeles
s agony, eyes flicking upward as the group walked by but unable or unwilling to make a move toward them. Despair like nothing Ken had ever imagined existed here. Despair beyond all knowledge. Other demons shambled by, disfigured and deformed creatures that fell to their knees and begged the group for death. These were the wanderers of hell, bad beings that had committed unspeakable acts when alive. Ken imagined who they might be, or to which group of people they might belong. If indeed they were human. Hell, he imagined, wouldn’t be picky on whom it would accept.
Felicia struggled to cope with the relentless despair. “My hope is gone,” she confided to Ken. “I see nothing to live for. To carry on for. Why am I here?”
Ken hugged her hard. “To get back,” he said. “You carry on so you can return to our world. To Aegis. To York.” He pointed at the broken house that lay just ahead. “Look. We made it. One more fight and we’re out of here.”
He helped her to the base of the hill. There the group paused, staring up the incline, seeing no movement, only desolation and decline. The isolation of the place enhanced its utter creepiness.
Up they stalked, all the way to the top. The terrible, twisted tree provided a marker. As they neared the summit, they bent closer to the ground, keeping their movements as unremarkable as possible. Ken felt the rotting soil clump between his fingers and vowed not to let them near his face and especially near his lips. The tree creaked as a breeze snapped up, its eerie branches leaning toward him like dead, skeletal fingers.
Come, they seemed to whisper. We have pretty things to show you. A special treat. Come closer . . . so we can touch you.
Then Ken realized the tree was whispering the words into his brain. He knew it because Felicia was walking forward with her arms outstretched. Ken grabbed her waist and pulled her away at the last moment, just as a whip-thin, knobby branch sliced past her with all the sharpness and thrust of a cutthroat razor wielded by a psychotic madman.
“Down!” Lilith cried, head whipping around.
Eliza’s voice split the silence, a panicked warning. “Look out! She’s here!”
Ken whirled to find Dementia creeping up the hill behind them, a fanged poisonous spider, bones dancing and clicking together around her neck.
“Myyyyy home,” she hissed. “You dare thisssss? You tesssssst meee? I will end you allllll.”
“We only want the artefacts,” Ken tried, instantly drawing his sword. “Hand them over and we’ll go quietly.”
“The artefactsssssss?” Dementia’s mien twisted into an evil leer. “They mean everything to my Lorrrrd. His final hope. Without their powerrrrrr, he can neverrrrrr return.”
Then she stopped, as if realizing she’d said too much.
Ken nodded. The artefacts had just attained ultimate ownership status. Risk it all, he thought. Risk everything for them and scupper the Devil’s plan.
“Get the bitch.”
He swung the sword, narrowly missing her face, and grunted as his blade stuck into the earth. Dementia scuttled past him, gaining the hilltop and moving to the tree. As she paused, the sharp ridged branches rose and draped themselves over her shoulders, creeping like thick cockroaches. Once next to the tree’s spiny trunk she turned, a confident, smug smile making a rictus of her fang-filled face.
“Kill them with me, brotherrrrr,” she said. “Gnaw on their fragile bonessss. Feast on their frail fleshhhh. It issss time.”
Rapatutu exploded from hiding. Wielding a black mace, he sprang from the ruins of the house, his sole intention to kill, maim and rain down bloody mayhem. His first swipe narrowly missed cracking Milo’s skull. The huge vampire could only fall to the side, landing on one knee, as the spiked ball whistled past. If Milo had been hoping that the swing would unbalance the demon, he was disappointed. Rapatutu immediately spun and came back harder, aiming the mace once again at Milo’s bulk. The vampire rose fast and stepped in, now inside the mace’s swing range. The ball whipped harmlessly by.
Milo and Rapatutu were locked in an ugly embrace.
Ken pushed Lilith aside and focused on Dementia. The brother-sister demonic duo had clearly either already offloaded the artefacts or hidden them close by. Ken guessed the latter. These two would crave the Devil’s favor and would want to be at his side when Lucifer marched from hell to Earth. They would wait until the last minute.
Ken struck at Dementia, Felicia ranging out at his side. His blade got caught on a bed of branches only an inch from Dementia’s tough hide, then those branches tried to tug it out of his grasp. Dementia wriggled, laughing like a loon. A branch shot forward, drawing blood from his cheek. Ken flinched. If that twig had aimed for his eye, he’d be half blind now. He wrenched the sword free and moved, swinging the blade but never from the same point twice. The branches writhed and rose like a rolling Kevlar blanket, always protecting, always shielding.
Felicia stepped to Dementia’s blind side as Eliza leaped to Milo’s aid. Ken saw the Lycan change her form, head and jaws elongating, arms and feet growing claws and flowing lupine muscle. And even then, he still saw the beauty in her, the pliable elasticity of her outlook and nature, the effervescent character turned to natural, feral form. Doubling his efforts, he fought to save her the trouble of a blitz attack. He didn’t want to risk her life, not now.
Before he could re-engage though, his ears picked up a loud caterwauling, the sound of many throaty voices baying for blood. Dementia snarled at him.
“That issss the ssssound of our ssssoldiers. A hundred demonsss. A thousand. They come for you.”
Shit. Ken jabbed at her. Dementia slipped away from the tree, letting its branches deal with the onrushing Lycan. She twisted like a ballerina, testing Ken’s guard. He backed away, almost falling as those fangs and the rotting-breath smell of decayed flesh wafted over him. Dementia began to circle.
Milo staggered as Rapatutu managed to wrap the mace’s heavy chain around his throat. The barbed cable cut into his neck and held there, twisting tighter as Milo struggled. Rapatutu wrenched it hard, enjoying his victim’s agony.
But only for a second. Eliza came up on his right-hand side, striking hard. In that instant Rapatutu played a crazy card, gripping the mace’s handles and twirling Milo around like an Olympian swings the hammer and then letting go.
Milo flew free and tumbled down the slope fast, end over end, bowling over and over toward the bottom. Eliza’s immediate instinct was to leap after him, calling his name, and suddenly she was slipping too, moving too fast in his wake, tripping and stumbling over earth that he’d already uprooted. The two vampires quickly became a cartwheeling mess, gaining speed as they neared the bottom.
Rapatutu glared triumphantly at Ken and Felicia, having unexpectedly evened the odds. Lilith backed further away.
The horde of approaching demons, their voices an uninterrupted high-pitched screech, saw the two vampires and surged toward them. Ken’s heart fell to see the oncoming throng, their vast numbers surely more than two vampires could handle.
Then his vision filled with a more immediate problem: Dementia with her necklace of bones and horrific hair decorations. Powerful hands gripped his shoulders and that terrible mien stared down into his own.
“At lassssst. We meet again, Chosen One.”
Ken heaved her away, barely staying on his feet. To his left Rapatutu ran, distracting him, but then a gray streak smashed into the demon so hard it took it off its feet.
Felicia, he thought. The Lycan Missile.
The great wolf was bristling with fury. The huge head struck Rapatutu’s midriff, teeth already gnashing at his flesh even on first impact. The powerful shoulders followed, smashing with an unmatched muscular brawn. As the demon’s feet left the floor, the breath—if he breathed at all—slammed out of him, his face softened by the sudden impact of crushing G-force. Felicia’s front claws came into play. Both rose and latched onto Rapatutu’s neck, digging in, piercing flesh, gaining an unbreakable hold. Even as Rapatutu flew through the air, Felicia dug in further, trying to get her
back legs up and into his soft midriff.
At last, after an interminable time airborne, the two hit the ground hard, Felicia on top. Rapatutu never recovered. Even as he landed, even as pain finally registered and caused him to scream, Felicia sliced her front claws in opposite directions, ripping out his throat. There was no sound, no sign of death throes, just the absence of movement.
The wolf’s head swung around, eyes falling on Dementia, hungry.
The demon-bitch cried out. With shocking speed, she pushed past Ken and hurled herself at Felicia. The wolf sprang into the challenge.
Ken whirled again. Past the wolf and the demon, over the side of the hill, the vampires were beset by a horde, an army. Demons streamed at them. Eliza and Milo stood their ground, back to back, solid rocks withstanding the battering flow. Demons fell at their feet, tripped over writhing bodies, their own knobbed, hard-baked flesh broken by hammer blows.
Eliza reached out and ripped fangs and teeth from one demon’s mouth, using the sharp points to sever another’s neck. Her strength and poise were superb, matched only by the enormous Milo, the mountain at her back. He batted heads and bodies aside, swept up demons by the arms and legs and tore them apart. He smashed their brethren aside with severed limbs. Bodies piled up, the mass already higher than Eliza’s knees. The build-up of bodies presented a problem for the two vampires. Demons sprang and launched themselves off the wobbling pile, gaining momentum for their attack. They didn’t care that they were using the broken and dying bodies of their colleagues. Demons had no remorse.
As the battle continued, even the vampires showed signs of being overwhelmed. Felicia was locked in mortal combat with Dementia, the two mighty combatants so tightly matched and so wild that anyone trying to get in their way had more chance of dying than coming out of it in one piece.
Ken inched forward. All he needed was a millisecond, a faint opening. Then he could kill Dementia and they could both go help the vamps. All he needed was . . .
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