King of Hell (The Shadow Saga)

by Christopher Golden

  "No." Phoenix snapped her head around to stare at her. "I told you I've never seen anything like this. The Uprising . . . that was dead people coming back to life. Part of them was still inside them. Yeah, it was the ugly part, but this is not the same. The ghosts who manipulated my father . . . they were spirits. Lost souls. Human souls. Those things weren't human at all."

  The light ahead went from green to amber and Phoenix hit the accelerator. Cars were headed the opposite direction and she glanced at them, stunned to see that the drivers looked calm. Bored. Half-asleep, like the rest of the world. A thirtyish Latina talked on her cell phone.

  The light turned red and Phoenix sped right through it. She frowned, turned and glanced at Ronni. "Wait, you did see one, right?"

  "Three," Ronni said, her voice cracking. "I saw three. One of them came out of a dead girl's abdomen, split her open from inside and started to . . . to climb . . ."

  She tried to put the window down but the electrics didn't go fast enough. Ronni hit the lock and opened the door — the car doing sixty — and hung out over the pavement, straining her seatbelt, to loose a stream of vomit into the air. Some of it splattered the rear door as the wind and their speed whipped it away.

  "Stop it!" Phoenix shouted. "Damn it, stop!"

  She grabbed the nurse's sweatshirt and tried to pull her back in. Ronni hung out there for a few more seconds, fighting the pull, and then yanked the door shut. She threw herself back against the seat and began to sob and pray and hyperventilate.

  "Shut it!" Phoenix snapped.

  Ronni had gone beyond listening. Something inside her had broken. Phoenix couldn't think with the woman braying like that. The night drew around them as dusk turned to darkness and up ahead a red beer truck had pulled to the side of the road, hazard lights on, back open wide and ramp down. The driver came out of the yawning truck back with a keg on a dolly.

  "God damn it, Ronni!" Phoenix yelled.

  "Butbutbut . . . oh, Jesus, girl, they were demons." She grabbed at Phoenix's arm. "This is the end, isn't it? I never believed in the Rapture, but this has to be it. It's here, but God didn't take any of us. He's left us all behind and now the demons are —"

  "Shut up!" Phoenix screamed, fresh tears springing to her cheeks.

  She tore her arm free, twisted the steering wheel, and the car swerved toward the back of the beer truck. The delivery guy spotted her and leaped off the ramp onto the sidewalk as the dolly fell over and the keg thumped and rolled onto the pavement. At the last second Phoenix jerked the wheel to the left and the car caromed off the side of the truck, tearing off her mirror and sending up sparks. Objects in mirror, she thought, are closer than they fucking appear.

  Her heart thundered and her chest clenched and her breath came in hitching gasps. Ronni had never stopped sobbing. Phoenix turned and punched her in the shoulder as hard as she could.

  "You bitch!" Ronni screamed. "What the hell —"

  Phoenix stood on the brake. The car skidded to a halt and she popped the gearshift into park.

  "Get out," she said, her face flushed, a little bit of madness creeping in around the edges of her mind.

  Terror lit Ronni's eyes. "No, please. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. I'll be —"

  "I don't know you," Phoenix said quietly. "I don't need you. Whatever this is, I intend to live through it. I'm not going to get very far with some chick who can't stop being hysterical for two seconds."

  "It's —"

  "The Rapture? Maybe so, but I don't believe in that shit. If I learned anything in the Uprising, it's that we're on our own. This is crisis time, Veronica, and I promised myself that I'd never be taken by surprise in a crisis again. I didn't plan for . . . demons, or whatever the hell those things are . . . but I do have a plan, and it doesn't involve holding your hand."

  The night had quickly overtaken them. In the dashboard light, Phoenix watched Ronni struggle to compose herself.

  "I'm . . ." Ronni said, sniffling. "I'll do whatever you need. Just don't leave me here. I have friends. You could drop me . . ."

  Phoenix had stopped listening. A siren wailed and she stared through the windshield at the police car that sped toward them, light bar flashing. She popped the door open and climbed out, and once out of the car she could hear the beer delivery man shouting at her. She turned to see the man standing beside his truck, hands thrown in the air.

  "Are you drunk or are you blind?" he called to her. The heavyset, broad-shouldered guy had torn his work shirt and the knee of his pants when he'd jumped from the ramp. Now he gestured to the long scrape on the side of the truck where some of the metal had buckled and torn. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  Phoenix couldn't breathe. The man looked furious, but he had every reason to be. Being angry with her — that was the normal response. The ordinary reaction.

  The police car raced by them, ghostly blue lights flashing across the beer man's face and his scarred truck and the plate glass windows of the liquor store and the sub shop in the little strip mall beside which she had stopped her car.

  "Hey," a quiet voice said behind her. "There's another one coming."

  A strange stillness came over Phoenix as she turned and saw that Ronni had gotten out of the car. The two of them watched as not one but two more police cars roared past them. The truck driver stepped into the street and tried to flag them down but the cops kept going as if they hadn't seen him.

  "Damn it!" the driver snapped. "What's going on around here?"

  Phoenix pointed past him, above his head. "That."

  The grizzled driver had come within fifteen feet of her, but now he turned. Ronni came up behind her and the three of them stared at the plume of black smoke that rose into the sky to the northeast, near the river. Ronni said nothing but Phoenix knew they were both thinking the same thing — the hospital.

  "What's going on?" the driver asked. Phoenix noted the name sewn into the shoulder of his shirt. Wayne. "That a fire or an explosion?"

  "Maybe both," Phoenix said slowly.

  The chaos in her mind had begun to settle and she turned to look south along Route 9, which was also called Broadway and which would have taken them all the way into the heart of Manhattan if they kept going. Here, though, they were twenty yards from the turn in the road just before the downtown part of Dobbs Ferry, a charming little Westchester County town.

  "Ronni, stay with the car," she said, and started toward the bend in the road. Her pace quickened to a run and the driver shouted after her.

  "What about my truck?"

  You've got bigger problems, Phoenix thought.

  At the corner, she looked left. The street lamps along the little downtown of Dobbs Ferry had come on. People were parked all along the road. The shops were open and she could smell pizza and hear teenagers shouting at each other and laughing. A fiftyish man jogged toward her, listening to an iPod as he ran. Beyond him, a group of twentysomething women came out of a tavern. A pickup truck came toward her and she could see several cars stopped at the light at the intersection two blocks down. The whole of Dobbs Ferry seemed to be functioning as if nothing at all had happened.

  Then a siren blatted and began to shriek and she saw a long fire truck turn a corner onto the main road and growl as it picked up speed, headed her way. Another came behind it, joining the chorus of wailing emergency vehicles.

  Phoenix started back toward her car, where Ronni and Wayne the Budweiser man watched the fire trucks go by in numb fascination. Wayne seemed stunned that the police had passed him by, was mumbling about it to Ronni as Phoenix walked up.

  "What'd you see?" Ronni asked.

  "Nothing. It's just an average night in Dobbs Ferry," Phoenix said. "The chaos up there . . . it hasn't spread this far yet."

  "What chaos?" Wayne demanded. "You know something, don't you?"

  Despite her smooth, dark skin, Ronni looked pale. "You wouldn't believe us if we told you," she said, then looked at Phoenix. "What now? Do you think they'll be able to get it und
er control?"

  Phoenix thought of Dr. Song, and the fact that each person the first demon had killed had become the doorway for another.

  "Not a chance."

  "Then what do we do?"

  Phoenix stared at the plume of smoke in the distance, gray against the indigo sky. Her heart kept fluttering in her chest but her thoughts continued to click into place like pieces of a puzzle she never imagined being able to solve. During the Uprising, they had come to realize that the connection the three mediums had made — the circuit — had allowed the spirits of the dead to come through, and that only breaking that circuit could end it. Phoenix had shot Eric Honen to make that happen.

  "It started at the hospital," she said now. With my father, she thought but did not add. Again, with my father. "If we can figure out why and how, maybe we can stop it."

  "Us?" Ronni said, staring at Phoenix. "Are you out of your mind?"

  "If not us, then who?" Phoenix demanded, thoughts racing, growing surer by the second that they were leading her in the right direction. An image filled her mind, the sight of those hideous claws bursting from her father's belly, but she pushed it away. "You think the cops are going to fix this? What we just saw is evil, Ronni. Bullets aren't going to stop demons. They're going up there just to die."

  Wayne put a heavy, calloused hand on her shoulder. He had fear in his eyes, but intelligence, too, and a quiet, iron strength.

  "Evil and demons? Maybe you better tell me what this is all about."

  Phoenix shook her head. "Sorry. I wish you luck, man. But I don't have time to stand here and convince you. Stick around long enough and you'll figure out what's real and not real."

  She shrugged off his hand and turned back toward her car. Ronni kept staring at the smoke in the distance for a second and then hurried to follow.

  "Where do you think you're going?" Wayne said, but doubtfully now. "Look at this damage to my truck. You've gotta give me your insurance information."

  "Don't worry about your truck, Wayne," Phoenix replied as she pulled open her car door and slipped inside. "Worry about your life insurance."

  As Ronni climbed in, Phoenix slammed the door, fired up the car and drove off. She glanced at Wayne in the rearview mirror but he hadn't even bothered to watch them pull away. He had turned to the northwest to watch the smoke, even as another police car screamed by, blue lights flashing.

  "You have any idea where you're going?" Ronni asked.

  "To see a friend who might have some answers. You want me to drop you somewhere?"

  "Hell, no," the nurse said, glancing nervously over her shoulder. "Seems to me that right now the safest place for me is with you. Though if that changes, I'd appreciate you letting me know."

  Phoenix kept both hands tight on the wheel, hoping she didn't get Ronni killed.

  On and Off the Shadowpaths

  Octavian followed Squire and Danny through the shifting darkness of the Shadowpaths. He had conjured another light sphere and it floated ahead of them, its warm golden illumination dimmed by the constant drain placed upon it by the hungry blackness of this limbo world. Nature abhors a vacuum, or so Octavian had read. But the darkness of the Shadowpaths abhorred the presence of light.

  "Why couldn't we have just crossed over from your world?" he asked.

  Squire glanced back at him. "It hasn't been sealed off the way your world has, but after the last time it was nearly destroyed, Doyle and some of the others weaved a spell to keep it hidden from other dimensions. It was the last thing the old man did before he left us and I'm not going to screw it up by letting Danny find and open a doorway and let Hell know we're here."

  "Mr. Doyle sounds like a formidable mage. I would've liked to have met him."

  "Nah," Squire scoffed. "You're not uptight enough. He would've hated you."

  "That's not funny," Danny said.

  "Doesn't mean it ain't true."

  They marched onward. Despite the vastness of this in-between place, the air felt close and Octavian had the occasional shiver of claustrophobia. It seemed hard to breathe here, as if they were climbing Everest instead of wandering the least traveled corners of a seemingly endless dark labyrinth normally trodden only by hobgoblins and other dimension-hoppers.

  "Do you ever run into other people walking the paths?" Octavian asked.

  Squire and Danny had been talking as they walked, quietly catching up on the time that had passed they had last seen one another. From what Octavian had overheard, this mostly consisted of Squire apologizing for not visiting in so long and the demonic young man reaffirming their brotherhood.

  Now Squire paused and glanced back at him. "Why? What did you see?"

  "Just wondering," Octavian said. Though in truth he did feel . . . something. Some presence, the focus of some awareness, as though their passing had been observed from the deepest darkness.

  "I've run across monsters in here," the hobgoblin admitted, his yellow eyes narrowing. His voice lowered to a rasp. "And once in a while some ordinary citizen stumbles in by accident — through a rift or portal or whatever — and those poor souls are fucked up, let me tell you. In darkness like this, their minds break down pretty quick."

  "They go crazy?" Danny asked.

  "Batshit crazy," Squire confirmed. "But it's not often. The Shadowpaths ain't exactly a high traffic area."

  Danny uttered a soft, chuffing laugh, amused by the wit of his old pal, Squire, whom he had seemed ready to tear limb from limb only an hour or so before. From the moment they had entered the Shadowpaths, Octavian had made sure not to turn his back on Danny. The devil seemed pleasant enough now, but he was unlike anyone else Octavian had met — not fully a demon but not at all human, except in his heart. From what Squire had said, he had never quite fit in anywhere until he had gone to live with the mage, Mr. Doyle. He'd had friends and allies there, but after the cataclysm on their world, he had been left alone, and now loneliness and self-loathing had taken their toll. Danny talked about crazy as if he could differentiate between sane and insane, but Octavian had doubts about the devil's objectivity.

  "So, Danny, how does this work?" Octavian asked. "Do you have a secret password or something?"

  Danny glanced back at him, brow knitted in consternation. All-too-human irritation. And yet with his size and those red eyes and the horns, Octavian could not help but see malice in that glance. Even malevolence.

  "It's Hell," the devil said. "The only currency is fear."

  "You're that much of a badass?" Octavian replied. "Hell's sentries are going to just bow down before you?"

  Danny showed his teeth in a snarl. "Fuck off, man. I don't know you. I'm not here for you, and I can head on home if you —"

  Squire halted so abruptly that Octavian nearly collided with him. He turned, black mist shadows drifting across his face.

  "What are you trying to do, Pete?"

  Octavian stared at him. "I don't know what you mean."

  "You asked for my help and I'm helping you. Danny's willing to help me. You want to get into Hell, you won't find a better way than this, if you find another way at all. But here you are antagonizing the kid —"

  "I'm not —"

  Squire reached up and jabbed one stubby finger into Octavian's chest. "Don't poke the bear, Pete."

  "Sorry," Octavian said, throwing up his hands. He looked at Danny and tried his best to look sincere. "I've got a lot riding on this, that's all. People depending on me. Friends. You're meant to be our ambassador, supposed to get us through the door, but you don't exactly seem stable and that worries me."

  "Damn it —" Squire started.

  Danny put a hand on the ugly little man's shoulder. "No. I get it." His red eyes burned brighter. "You're not wrong. It's just that you don't have much choice."

  He turned and soldiered on, following the glowing orb that had paused with them but now floated ahead along the path as he strode away from them. Squire shot Octavian a withering glance.

  "How is this supposed to work?" Octav
ian said. "This guy is more likely to get us killed than help us invade Hell."

  Squire took a deep breath, glanced over to make sure Danny had passed out of earshot, and then stepped nearer to Octavian. The darkness had begun to close around them now that the orb had floated off, and the hobgoblin's eyes seemed somehow both brighter and darker than ever, burning amber coals instead of bright yellow.

  "He's of the bloodline, okay?"

  Octavian held out a hand and blue light ignited around it, casting pale light onto Squire's face.

  "The bloodline. Of Hell," Octavian said.

  "That's why the sentries will fear him. He may have been abandoned on Earth as a baby, but his father — who figured him for the runt of the litter — is a Demon Lord."

  Octavian nodded. Their confidence made sense to him now, but only to a point.

  "We don't even know if that hierarchy still exists."

  Squire rolled his eyes. "It's Hell. You spent long enough there to know its politics. Old loyalties linger, and if the Demon Lords have been killed or deposed, loyalty to them will only have grown. The kid knows it, see? But he grew up with a human mom who loved him and now he lives in a house alone and he's blacked out the mirrors so he doesn't have to see what he really is. That house is like his prison. He's not really welcome in the human world and he won't let himself belong to Hell. That's why he's just making the introductions and then going home, and the only reason he's helping us at all is because he wants a little company. He's broken, Pete, and he's never going to be right again. So don't poke the bear."

  Octavian opened his hands in surrender. "I'll do my best. It just worries me how on edge he is. Sometimes broken people keep breaking."

  "That's a chance you'll have to take," the hobgoblin said. "Like the kid said, it's not like you have much of a choice."

  Without awaiting a reply, Squire turned and hurried along the path after Danny, shadows swirling in his wake, filling in the space where he had just been. Octavian followed, weapons clanking against him as he picked up his pace.