Belinda fought among the new demons, with more still advancing among us. I blasted a beast from her back and another that sneaked up on her blind side. I saw Tanya jump atop a wall, slashing down with her blade, severing mandible, claw and reaching tentacle. The very air shuddered above our heads as an F22 screamed over, then banked and flew at Beelzebub’s dragon form. The vampire army could be seen away to our right and I saw Lucy’s elemental power unleashed in the form of water and fire blasts, in the shimmering of air, and the upending of earth. The spider-demons were jumping in that direction too, from the other side of the Stratosphere, coming down on top of the vampires.
There was a wide area of land ahead where they were building something new. The hoarding that secured the place had long since been torn down, and I saw a hidden horde of demons nestling there, lying in wait.
There had to be 10,000 of them.
I despaired. If they charged hard enough, they would slice right through us, all the way to the rear flanks. If we were broken apart, we would be taken apart. Three more jet fighters came down then, crashing onto the Strip and into Circus Circus. The explosions were enormous. Structures crumbled. I saw that the tide of battle was turning.
We were going to lose.
There were too many of them, too many claws, tusks, swords and spears. Our choppers unleashed a torrent of firepower at the crawling Stratosphere, pitting its façade until large chunks sheared off.
Ahead, Belinda went down. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. She tripped over a scurrying rat-like demon and fell headlong into the mouth of a four-foot-tall spider. I cringed, I unleased a fury of power. The spider’s jaws came down on her shoulders and bit deep.
No!
My blast struck the creature hard and then I was running. The blast shoved them twenty feet backward. I flung jets of power to left and right, wounding and killing all manner of beasts. In front, Belinda grabbed hold of the demon’s jaws and pulled them apart. Strings of saliva clung stickily to its fangs. She reeled back and fell away. At the same time, I smashed it to pieces with one more strike.
I reached Belinda. Bent down. Put my arms under her shoulders. “How bad is it?”
“It hurts.” She struggled up.
I expected to see blood, ragged wounds. What I saw instead was a dented flak jacket and an imprint of what appeared to be knives.
“Nothing too bad though. Feels like I got stabbed.”
“It’ll bruise like a mother.”
“Bruising I can handle. Ripped flesh I probably can’t.”
She pushed away from me, re-joining the battle. I glanced at Natalie. “Onward,” she said.
“Onward,” I said.
But they were legion before us. The hidden ones attacked. We fell. We died. We started to get overrun. The vampire army had made their way to our side, breaking down fences and walls to shore us up. Lucy drowned spider-demons in mid-air and sent fireballs into the legions that stretched all the way from Circus Circus to Treasure Island. I couldn’t see their end.
Lysette was using the machine gun mounted on her vehicle, screaming as she did so. Ceriden reached down and hauled up demons by their necks so he could snap them. They were being driven erratically, hanging on by chance rather than skill. A spider landed in the bed of their truck and snapped at Lysette’s exposed back. She didn’t turn, didn’t stop firing. I split it in half with a blast, but then two more landed and I had more immediate problems at hand.
A wayclearer demon swung an axe at my chest. It grazed my Kevlar, so intent was I on saving Lysette. I shot it with my handgun, then cleared a small swathe ahead before managing to check once more on Lysette.
Both spider demons had leapt at her. She’d tried to swing the machine gun around, but it hadn’t worked. Instead, Milo had leapt to her aid, holding a demon off with each hand, his huge muscles corded and struggling. The demons pressed strongly enough that he couldn’t fight them, only hold them at bay.
Ceriden spun to engage, but at that moment a winged beast fell from the sky like a missile. Its pointed beak struck Milo in the chest and penetrated, going all the way through. I saw the big vampire flinch, then he slumped and died right before my eyes.
Ceriden leapt on the two spider demons, killing one instantly. I obliterated another. The winged beast couldn’t extract itself from Milo and died a fitting death at the hands of Ceriden. I saw the King of Vampires kneel by his dead friend, eyes closed, looking as desolate and hopeless as I felt.
And still, hordes of snarling figures swarmed toward us. They were endless. Unstoppably feral and infinitely hungry. Our army had been more than halved and we still stood a daunting distance away from Lucifer himself.
I checked once more on my friends. I couldn’t see Felicia anymore and my heart bled. I hoped she was still fighting, still running, still breathing that free air.
It was everything we were fighting for.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Lilith dragged Ken, in chains, before her father. She didn’t spare him any hardship, just yanked and pulled until he groaned and cried out in pain.
The Devil licked his lips, sitting forward on his human throne. The pale forked tongue flicked up and down.
“This is the sword-bearer,” he stated. “I remember his foul stench.”
It had been a risky journey down the solidified ichor. Lilith started through the gate just as jet fighters and hierarchy demons fought for supremacy among the brightly lit towers of Las Vegas, at first following the guard down. Once they stepped beyond the human gate and saw the pit, where thousands of demons had refashioned the pool area of Caesar’s, she suggested they continue alone.
“You introduced us already. He knows we’re coming. You don’t need to make the journey again, especially with those fighter planes coming so close.”
The guard had acquiesced after a while, turning to trudge back to the top of the building. Lilith had waited a moment to get her bearings. This hard ichor appeared to switchback several times before it reached the base, forming an easy walkway. It was mirrored on the tower opposite them too, and on the conference center, although that was lower in height. She pulled Ken and Cleaver closer.
“We’re in it now,” she said. “As close as we’re gonna get. When we get near the bottom, he’ll be able to read our minds. Are you ready?”
It was the moment they’d all been waiting for. The dread moment. The decisive moment. The three of them held the world’s fate in their hands and nobody outside knew it. Ken’s face filled with a struggle between determination and uncertainty. Cleaver looked solid, as resolute as an anvil of gold, but looked as tense as the tautest high-wire.
Ken adjusted the Lionheart blade, so it was at its easiest position. “No more waiting,” he said and took the key to the manacles in his mouth
Cleaver freed himself and became The Wraith. Lilith had no idea where he was. The theory was that Lucifer couldn’t read the mind of The Wraith, him being invisible and attracting zero attention, and Lilith had taught Ken one of the many mind tricks she’d had to learn to stay sane during her disturbing fifteen-year captivity.
So now, they were finally here. At the base of the Devil’s throne. Eight feet from his hanging cloven hooves. Finally able to look him in the eye.
Lilith hated what she saw.
The epitome of all evil, he was a parent to her. She’d never seen him in this guise, but she knew his voice. Knew that he’d acted properly around her and protected her from those that sought to do her harm.
“You came back to me,” the Devil stated. “Why?”
“It’s simple,” she said. “You guarded and segregated me once. For fifteen years. I want that again for my mother and me. In your new world, in your new hell, I want a patch of heaven.”
The Devil gripped the living arms of his throne tighter. Lilith saw men and women intertwined, their arms and legs bent out of shape, screaming in agony. “Is that true, girl, or do you seek to deceive me?”
“Oh, that’s fine coming fro
m the Father of Lies,” she snapped. “I brought this one,” she heaved on Ken’s manacles. “I dragged him for miles.”
“Yes, and where’s the other one? The guard said you brought two.”
“I killed him up top, while I waited,” Lilith said. “Or he would have escaped.”
The Devil studied her. “You do seem different, my daughter. Stronger. Harder. But murder? I can’t see that.”
“Ask your guards.” She nodded at the top of the tower, gambling that the Devil wouldn’t stoop so low.
He didn’t. Instead, he switched his attention to Ken. “And you still carry the Lionheart blade. I have to say, human, I admire your persistence.”
Ken held up his manacles. “Undo these, and I’ll show you more.”
“You dream of killing me? I can read it in your mind. You dream of my slaughter, my beheading. Of taking your world back. Your head is full of it.”
Ken nodded, saying nothing.
Lilith watched the exchange with bated breath. One slip-up and they were all dead. The Devil was in the pit, in his element, and he had full control over them. “He is yours,” she said, “to do with as you please.”
She knew Cleaver would be waiting, making his way closer ever so slowly, because even invisible men left tracks or caused noises when they were careless, and this floor was strewn with brittle bones and limbs, and with sticky ichor and blood. And the Devil currently sat twelve feet or so in the air, unreachable.
They needed to make him come down to their level. For Cleaver to have any bearing, the Devil needed to be on the ground.
“Do you want to hurt him?” She tugged once more on Ken’s chains, dragging him off his knees so that he face-planted the ground. His hair was matted with gore, his clothes a mess, his exposed flesh caked with bloody mud.
The Devil opened both palms. “Look around you, daughter. This is my domain. Do you think I need your permission?”
Lilith hadn’t meant it that way and he knew it, but she looked anyway. She saw swimming pools filled with carnage and writhing bodies. She saw naked humans dancing. She saw bloodlust and carnal greed.
In one corner, an orgy covered fifty square feet. In another, demons and men were being roasted over hot coals and stretched on racks. People were made to run with spiked bones in the bottom of their feet. Rows of the inversely impaled stretched the length of the pit. The columns that remained of Caesar’s pool area bristled with severed heads, their eyes still wide, staring and blinking.
She looked up, repulsed by it all. “Aren’t you worried a plane or a demon might come crashing down here?”
“Nothing can reach me in the pit.” He laughed. “That is the true and glorious folly of their attack. Their precious last stand. They do not know that I have cast a protective web over my pit that they can never, ever penetrate.”
The laughter jarred her bones. Lilith held it together, employing every trick she knew to keep from shuddering. The Devil, though, showed no signs of moving.
“And the Lionheart blade,” she said. “It is here, too.”
“And that is precious,” Lucifer finally agreed with her. “The highest service you could ever perform for me. Well done, my daughter.”
“Thank you, Father. Do you want it?”
“Soon,” he said. “Very soon, I will destroy it myself. But first to you, daughter. I fear I missed your twenty-first birthday due to the distractions offered by this very war. It came faster than expected, when my subordinate Emily Crowe identified a way to trick the World-Ender and his Destroyers. It came upon us in days.”
At the mention of her name, Emily Crowe rose from the base of the throne where she had been curled among the rotting dead. Her face was clean, but the rest of her unclothed body was adorned by churned-up, sticky gore and dripping ichor. She faced Lilith with legs apart and head held high, as though she had achieved a great historical deed.
Lilith ignored her. “I understand that,” she said. “My twenty-first passed the same as any other.”
“Oh, I know.” The Devil smiled slightly. “But it should have been so different. I raised you for fifteen years to corrupt you utterly on that day. And I missed it.” He flicked a finger. “So fickle is the short span of human life.”
Lilith stared, trying desperately to think of a way to bring the conversation back around to Ken and the Lionheart blade.
But the Devil wasn’t finished. “I want it now,” he said. “This very minute. I will see you corrupted, see you brought utterly into my stable and then, to culminate, we will both destroy the Lionheart blade, and humanity’s last hope, together.”
Lilith gawped, thunderstruck.
The Devil hooted and snorted with laughter. “Does that sound good to you?”
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Their snarling legions filled my vision. I couldn’t believe how many there were, but more importantly I despaired for how depleted we were.
Not just in number. We, the Chosen, were feeling washed-out. We’d helped push our troops from the plains and through the outskirts of the big city to Las Vegas Boulevard. And now we had Encore and the Venetian in our sights, hotels that were within a few minutes’ walking distance of Caesar’s Palace.
We’d come so far, but first the hierarchy demons had taken our fighter aircraft and then spider-demons had jumped in to decimate our ranks. The F22s had taken to streaking straight up into the skies, attaining heights that their adversaries could not, then banking hard and swooping down, strafing the dragons with shells and missiles. When they missed, part of a hotel exploded; but when they hit, Beelzebub and Baal shuddered, writhed and bled.
But still they didn’t die.
On the ground the enemy was among our ranks. We’d somehow brought all the forces together, and I realized too late that we’d been herded. Demons attacking from the flanks had pushed us into one large, vulnerable force. The demons had the heights; they jumped and fired weapons from the tops of buildings and bridges. The incredible force that confronted us along the Strip had one main job – to hold us in place.
The Chosen were together. Tanya and Lysette were with me. Lucy a few feet to my right. Natalie was at my back. Leah Aldridge attended the wounded behind us, and two witches did their best to raise a net to help shield our heads. Belinda strove about eight ranks in front of me, fighting in the front line where she had always been.
But we were bone tired. We were making mistakes. Ceriden could see that his vampire army had already been more than halved. Milo was dead among so many others.
Lysette shouted a rallying cry, “I can see Caesar’s. I can see Caesar’s!”
It flooded my body with adrenalin, but my body was running on empty, giving it nothing to feed off. I was more galvanized when our remaining helicopters banked through the skies right then, flying overhead and raining bullets into our enemies. They came three abreast, in four rows, and smashed the demon ranks apart.
I cheered and ran. We all did. I somehow sensed this could be the last chance. I released a power blast at the same time as Lucy, further plowing the demonic field.
A wide strip of ground opened up dead ahead.
We filled it, running, firing and fighting to reach our goal.
We were still 80,000 strong, I guessed. We carried incredible amounts of armament. We had the support vehicles and even civilian drivers with us, using their own cars to make some headway.
“Hey!” a voice shouted. “Remember us?”
The Dino Hunters were with us and they had brought friends. Their armored Dodge Ram swept past with one-eyed Sam firing from the bed, Lizzy on the 50-cal and Roy steering like a rally driver, swerving between knots of demons, barging them left and right. Behind them came eighteen more trucks, all shapes, makes and sizes, all fully-loaded, roaring fearlessly ahead.
I used lightning strikes to keep demons from their sides. Lucy swept some out of mid-air with mini-typhoons. It was getting close to the time when Lucy and I might have to perform our Hail Mary pass, a last and no doubt
suicidal idea, where we would both throw everything we had at the demons, depleting us but hopefully clearing the road to Caesar’s.
The time was almost here.
I wished it didn’t have to happen, but humanity was losing. The battle raged to all sides, above and even behind.
In the next moment I froze in horror.
A nest of spider-demons erupted from a manhole to my right, smashing up from underground and scuttling among our ranks. It happened in just a few seconds and it took us a moment to readjust.
And in that moment, some of our best died.
Tanya whirled and struck out, killing one but falling under the feet of a second. I blasted it, helped by Natalie, and then turned to another. Tanya struggled to her knees. I discharged a lightning bolt right in the middle of them, scattering them, and knew instantly that I’d had no backup from Natalie.
I whirled. Natalie was dead, her neck at an angle. One of the spider-demons stood on top of her. I screamed and blasted it apart. I moved to kneel at Natalie’s side, but there was no time.
Simultaneously, seven more manholes erupted, disgorging snapping spiders.
I flung power left and right. I heard a dreadful roar, amplified eight times over. I saw the nightmarish heads of a row of T-Rexes approaching, an entire row that stretched right across Las Vegas Boulevard. I saw three helicopters go down amid our own ranks, hit by jumping demons and enormous chunks of masonry. And most horribly, I saw new things emerging, giant octopus-demons that crawled across the facades of buildings and reached out to us with slimy tentacles, each one ending in hundreds of sharp, biting suckers. I saw twelve-foot-high arachnids with stingers above six of their eight eyes. My vision, my mind, was shredded.
Tanya Jordan went down. I saw it happen. She was spinning, using two swords again, slicing in all directions, her movement a lethal, perfect ballet, the death she dealt never ending. She pushed ahead and then twelve strong, tall demons carrying swords and shields fell on her at the same time. She went under and I couldn’t see her anymore.
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