Of Heaven and Hell

by Anthology

  That was at eight o’clock. By two-forty-five a.m. Taz was worried. He paced the flat and fretted, torn between going hunting and waiting near the phone. He’d spoken to Pix half a dozen times, but the calls had stopped after midnight, and he hadn’t got an answer when he tried to ring back. He kept telling himself they’d probably moved on to somewhere with no signal, but that excuse was wearing thin. The hands of the clock ticked away the remainder of the hour and when they stood at three Taz knew what he had to do.

  The pack he’d been carrying when he arrived stood almost untouched in the corner. He’d taken out the few clothes he possessed and his book, which he carefully kept up to date, writing each day in his tiny, neat print. The rest of the contents were undisturbed. Although Pix had asked once or twice what was in there, he hadn’t pushed it, respecting Taz’ right to his privacy.

  Tonight, as he laid out the weapons on the bed, Taz wondered what Pix would have said if he’d shown him the deadly implements. The thought brought Pix to mind and a brief fond smile turned grim as he picked up a small black box, cursing himself that he hadn’t brought it out sooner. The box felt icy to the touch, the only evidence he needed that his unease was justified, and that Pix was in grave danger.

  Once he’d selected the weapons he wanted and settled them into their familiar places, he took the box in his hand and left the flat. Outside, the night was chill but clear, the streets empty. A full moon lent all the light he needed and gave the quiet city an eerie, expectant feel, as if every window were an eye, watching—some with curiosity, some with support, and others with ill intent. He ignored them all.

  Once outside, Taz flipped the lid of the box and a pale blue light spilled out. The faintly glowing arms of a compass greeted him and spun lazily on their pin. Cold steam rose in air that had turned from chill to icy, and Taz shivered. There was a demon, and it was close. Of course, in demon terms “close” could be anything from a few feet to a few miles; neither the demon nor the tracer were that subtle or precise. But he knew. He knew where it was. He knew where they all were.

  Taz’ feet tapped on the cobbles as he hurried through streets that grew darker as he moved away from the populated areas into the shopping center. Although there were still streetlights, and the moon hung full and low, somehow the light dimmed as he hurried through the silent night, his destination set.

  When he arrived at the shop, he of course found it shut up for the night. That was no barrier for him and he merely had to lay one finger on the lock to hear the satisfying click as it opened. Then the door swung inward toward the dark interior with an atmospheric creak.

  As he stepped over the threshold, the temperature fell sharply and Taz found himself surrounded by what seemed to be every ghost in the house. They were agitated, all trying to speak to him at once, their voices dusty with lack of use, their minds scattered with fear and confusion. Ghosts were rarely coherent at the best of times and tonight their agitation rendered them nothing more than an annoying buzz.

  “Please,” he said aloud. “Don’t crowd me. I know what’s here. I’m going to deal with it. I need to know where they are. Can you show me?”

  The tall figure of a man, dressed all in black with a hat low on his head, hiding his face, stepped forward.

  “May the Lords of the Universe forgive me,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “I know the place. I used it myself in life, although, God knows, not for this.”

  Taz’ heart jumped. He was elated to have a guide. That would save so much time. Yet....

  “Guide me.”

  The man nodded. “Follow me.”

  Taz followed the ghostly form, with others crowded closely behind, into the back of the shop, down some narrow wooden stairs and into what seemed to be the kitchen of the old house. Here dust hung heavy in the air along with the smell of age and decay, but there was more. The sickly smell of death was all-pervasive, and the ghosts hesitated at the entry. They recognized the demonic miasma as well as he did.

  “Stay here,” he said and most of the ghosts gladly floated or faded away. The tall man, however, along with a stately lady and the holy man, remained. He got the sense that they were with him until the end and ready to fight if needs be.

  “I knew this day would come,” the dark man said. “That which I began was bound to seek conclusion at some time. Be warned, there is evil here. Evil beyond the demonic, that walks in flesh and blood.”

  “A man? There’s a man here?” Of course, there had to be someone. No demon would have snatched his friends and brought them here. A demon had no finesse, no motive. It existed only to kill and consume. If it had taken Pix and Rohan, they would already be dead, and the demon, having fulfilled its purpose, would have been long gone.

  “A warlock. He’s powerful, but no match for you, not without the demon.”

  “He’s bound a demon?” Taz was truly shocked. It took an extremely powerful, twisted, and foolish individual to seek to bind a demon. For sure they could be bound, Taz had done it himself once or twice to achieve a particular end. But demons would not remain bound, and anyone stupid enough to try to use its power soon found out, to their life’s cost, that a bound demon destroys anything in its reach once the bonds broke, as they always did.

  “Not yet. He has some power from an artefact.” The man sighed. “I created it myself and thought it long gone. It has the power to capture a piece of soul.”

  “Oh God. That’s what happened. That’s what happened to Pix. Someone took a piece of his soul. That’s why the demon was drawn to him.”

  “Correct. The demon has tasted him and now he wants the rest.”

  “But why? I don’t understand why anyone would do that.”

  “For power. The warlock uses the soul shard to lure the demon. The demon opens a doorway, and that’s what the warlock wants.”

  “An open doorway? To the demon realm? Oh Lords.” This man was ambitious. He wasn’t seeking to bind a demon. He wasn’t seeking to harness the power of just one of the creatures. He was seeking to harness the power of them all.

  “Can he do it? Can he use the power from the demon realm? Can he survive it? Won’t the demons swarm?”

  “Yes. When the door opens the demons will swarm to it and....”

  “And what?” The man remained silent, his face downcast beneath the shadow of his hat. “And what?”

  “I believe the warlock will send the soul into the void. The demons will follow.”

  “Oh no. No.” Cold fingers of fear gripped Taz and almost stopped his heart. The warlock was using Pix to lure a demon into the mortal world, through a doorway which he would then wedge open. When the demons tried to come through, he would throw them Pix’s soul, like meat to a pack of hounds, to keep them occupied while he drew power from their world. He would probably have some kind of artefact, like the one he’d trapped Pix’s soul inside, which he would imbue with demonic energy before the demons finished consuming Pix, and probably Rohan too. Then he would close the gate again.

  “We have to stop him.”

  “Yes,” the man said. “We do.”

  Taz paused. “You tried this, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I used the soul of a child to lure the demons, but the lure wasn’t strong enough. I hadn’t the foresight to detach a piece of the soul first to seed it. The demon came sniffing, but I was not able to entice it to open the door far enough to make use of the demonic energy on the other side.”

  “What happened to the child?” Taz didn’t want to ask the question and he certainly didn’t want the answer. He got it anyway.

  “The ritual detached its soul from its body, which could not survive.” The man raised his head. Eyes glinted from the shadow. “The soul was pure, untainted. I could not contain it. If it is of any consolation, it was taken by the light.”

  “No. No consolation,” Taz snapped. On balance, he would much prefer, if Pix had to die, that his soul be taken by angels and not demons, but he had no intention of letting him die. “Show me the w
ay.”

  The man led them to the back of the kitchen, near the huge old range. Reaching out a hand, he touched the wall, and a grating sound filled the room as the range swung up and outward, its passage announced by the squeal of metal over stone. Finally a set of stone steps were revealed, leading down into darkness.

  “They are here,” the man said. “There are marks of passage.”

  “I see them.” Taz knew very little about his origins, his early life. The diaries he had stowed away in a locker on a windswept station were the only records he had of those days. Even then there was no mention of Taz the child. From the very first words he was Taz, the warrior. Taz the redeemer of souls, the champion of the helpless, the righter of wrongs. He was meant to be some shining warrior who came charging in to lay evil to rest and help the lost find their way. Yet he had never felt as lost as he did now.

  He’d always known he was not exactly human. Not completely. There were clues. His ability to read lives and see the doorway of death was only part of it. The fact that the diaries, all written in his own meticulous hand, dated back centuries was another. Yet another was the fact he could see as well in utter darkness as he could in light, and he could see energy. Here he clearly saw the signs of a struggle, metal scraping along the wall, feet scuffing the stone steps. It wasn’t enough. Neither Rohan nor Pix were fighting enough.

  His heart as cold as the stones beneath his feet, Taz descended into the darkness, closely followed by his three ghostly companions.

  The steps led into a corridor lined—walls, floor, and ceiling—with stone slabs. Here and there along the way torches were set into holders on the walls. None of them were lit. It was cold, oh so cold.

  Gradually, Taz became aware of a lightening of the darkness. It wasn’t light as such, just... less dark. The darkness faded as the lack of dark grew. Still, he wouldn’t have called it light, and no human who walked here would have been able to detect it. With the lessening of the dark came sounds. The chink of metal on stone, the rattle of chains, a chanting voice. Taz quickened his steps. The demonic energy was strong, but nowhere near as strong as it would have been if a demon had been present. The gate was opening, but there was still time.

  As Taz grew closer, the darkness faded into a faint, golden light. In other circumstances it would have been warm and comforting, but to Taz it was nothing but sinister, speaking only of fire and flame.

  As the passage led him closer to the source of power, the air became charged, greasy with the residue of power. Taz could see dancing motes of energy, whips of power that became curling tendrils, wrapping around his ankles. Taz wasn’t afraid of the power. Even though heat danced over his skin and prickled his soul, it couldn’t touch him. He’d faced worse. The sorcerer was strong, but Taz was stronger. The fear that churned in his gut and caused his hands to shake had nothing to do with him at all. He knew he could take care of himself, that he could crush the magician like a doll in his hands, but there was more at stake this time; much more.

  From the vision he’d had previously, and the sounds he could hear now, Taz was able to put together a rough picture of what he would find when he turned the corner. The room sounded quite large from the echoes, stone lined, or a cave. The back wall was set with hooks, pins, and shackles, and Rohan was spread out, hands and feet bound. He was clearly alive and awake because Taz could hear the clink of his chains as he struggled. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  About six feet in front of the wall was a stone altar, the sides carved with intricate images of horror and death. Around the foot was a channel that probably still contained traces of rusty brown dust. Pix was spread out on the altar, small and helpless beneath the power of the man who loomed over him. The warlock might as well have a dagger in his hand, because his chanting was carving into Pix’s soul, detaching it from his body, like a scalpel detaches tissues and tendons. He couldn’t hear it, no one could, but deep inside, beneath the spells that held him unconscious and immobile, Taz was sure Pix was screaming. Taz couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have your soul carved into pieces. He couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly be worse.

  Taking a deep breath, keeping the warlock’s position in the forefront of his mind, Taz pushed off from the wall, sped around the corner, and leaped forward. Smack. Taz hit the wall face first and bounced back. His head connected with the wall behind him and he slid to the ground, dazed.

  “Hello, Taz,” a voice said, in a friendly manner. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Taz’ head shot up and he groaned, raising his hand to the knot on the back of his skull where it hit the wall. It was sore, but there was no blood. His nose, on the other hand, was bleeding freely. He swiped at it with his sleeve.

  “Who are you?” he asked, pleased to note he sounded a lot steadier than he felt.

  “You don’t know me, but I’m about to become your worst nightmare.”

  Taz struggled to his feet and inched forward, putting his palms flat against the force field. Rohan had frozen, his eyes wide, staring at Taz with an expression of terror on his face. He wasn’t gagged, and Taz wondered again why he was so silent. Then Rohan opened his mouth and yelled—but no sound came. Magic, then. Magic had stolen his voice. It made sense. Taz took the information, stored it, and then moved it aside. He had other things to worry about.

  Pix lay still on the altar. He looked as if he was asleep, his chest rising and falling gently and his eyelids fluttering as if he was dreaming. Taz knew what kind of dreams were needed to possess a mind, to steal a soul. They were dreams that hurt, dreams that tore at your soul and shredded it. Taz thought back to what he’d seen when he read Pix, the terrible things that had been done by the monster who shattered his will and stole a precious piece of him. Even so, he couldn’t imagine what it was like to live them, or to experience them again in dreams from which he couldn’t wake.

  “Let him go.”

  “You disappoint me.” The warlock’s voice was soft, so soft Tax could barely detect it with his ears, but the words fell into his mind like stone slabs falling in a crypt, loud enough to deafen him. “I thought you’d have saved your breath for important things.”

  “Important things?”

  “I know what you are and what you do.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Taz’ eyes darted everywhere, searching for something, anything he could use. First, he needed to find a flaw in the energy force that was holding him back. If he couldn’t get through that, he couldn’t do anything. If he could keep the man distracted long enough, stop him chanting until the power web slipped....

  “Don’t be deceived. I’m stronger than I seem. You won’t find a chink in my armor by distracting me. The wheels have been set in motion and nothing you or anyone else can do will stop them. The door is open, and they’re coming. I can feel the power. Can’t you? I thought you would have.”

  Oh, he could feel it, alright. It made all the hairs on his body stand on end. It was like someone dragging their nails down a chalkboard, and the vibrations made him grit his teeth.

  “Is there anything you can do?” Taz hissed to his companions.

  “It is too late for your friend,” the dark man said in a sorrowful voice. “The spell is complete. His soul is loose. Once the door opens it will be cast free. We can lower the barrier, I think, and you must forget him and aim to close the door.”

  Forget him? Taz took a gulp of breath. If the man was right and Pix’s soul was freed from his body, he didn’t have very long. Some would believe he was already out of time, but that wasn’t so. There were ways a soul could be aided to attach to its body when there had been a separation. It wasn’t easy, and it had a cost, but it could be done. Not if it was in the demon realm being consumed by monsters though. Once Pix’s soul passed through the door it would be lost.

  “Do it,” Taz growled.

  The warlock tilted his head and slanted a look from brilliant green eyes. “Oh, you have pets. How sweet. They’ll do you no more
good than the silver hidden in your coat or the knife in your sleeve. You can’t reach me, and you can’t reach them. When the demons come, they will consume both of them. You too, if you are close enough.”

  “They’re not fussy who they consume. They’ll take you, too.”

  “Oh no, not me. I have protection.”

  “Do you really think any amulet will be powerful enough to divert a demon?”

  “Once it is imbued with the power of their own realm it will be. While they fight over the scraps I throw at their feet, I’ll suck in enough power to keep them controlled. I will be their master.”

  Horror crawled through Taz, but his voice was steady when he spoke. “Demons can’t be bound.”

  Thin laughter translated to the clash of giants in his head. “Not by any human means, but they can be bound with their own power. They can be controlled and tamed by their own magic.”

  “Tamed? You think you can tame a demon? Control it?” Disbelief replaced horror. The man was truly insane. Ordinarily, Taz would have been unaffected, safe in the knowledge of his own power to overcome this pathetic fool, but this time there was too much at stake. His eyes flicked around, sizing up the situation. For now, let him believe he was in control.

  “Once I have taken enough of their own power, from their own realm, I will be able to control them, and nothing on this earth will be able to stop me doing anything I want.”

  Taz snorted. “World domination by demon control. Fool.”

  “We’ll see who the fool is.” The man’s head snapped up. “They come.”

  “Take the barrier down,” Taz hissed.

  “Go for the warlock.” The ghost’s voice steadied him. It had no material substance, but it was soothing. Whereas the sorcerer’s voice dropped into his consciousness like concrete, the ghost’s wrapped it in silk. “Take his amulet. Smash it and the door will be closed forever.”

  “I will.”