Hellfighters: The Devil's Engine Series, Book 2

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  “The elevator looks safe enough,” he muttered.

  Herc went first, the cab rocking as he entered. Pan followed, the fear flowing from her in great big waves. Marlow pictured the elevator coming loose, suddenly plunging into darkness. And it was because he didn’t want to lose her that he stepped inside. There were grumbles as the others joined them, all except for Claire. She stood in the corridor, chewing her nails like she hadn’t eaten in a month.

  “Come on,” said Marlow.

  “I cannot.”

  “Better in here with us than out there alone, right?”

  “But you do not know what he is like,” she said. “You have not seen him.”

  Marlow thought back to the fight outside his school. Mammon had been an impossible shape of darkness pushing up the street—an icebreaker shattering its way through reality. And again on the train, he had torn the world apart, a glimpse of what was to come if the gates opened, if hell broke free.

  “He is not human,” she said. “He cannot be beaten.”

  “He might not be human anymore,” said Pan. “But he can be beaten.”

  “We can crush his ass,” said Truck.

  “It is not just him,” she said. “His soldiers.”

  “We’ll crush their asses, too,” Truck said.

  “Come on,” said Herc, his hand on the gate. “Last chance.”

  She backed away even more, hitting the wall.

  “I am sorry.”

  Herc sighed as he pulled the gate shut and slammed the button. Marlow put his hands on the grille, looking at the young girl outside.

  “We’ll be back,” he said. “Just wait here.”

  “You asked about your friend,” she said.

  “Charlie? Yeah, he’s down there, right?”

  The gates locked, the elevator starting its slow journey down.

  “He is there,” she said. “But be careful, Marlow.”

  She walked to the gates, looking down at them.

  “He is not like you,” she said. “He is like him.”

  “What?” Marlow yelled. He pushed the button, trying to make them stop, but the elevator kept moving. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Mammon is not the one who is uniting the Engines,” she shouted over the whine of the gears. “Charlie is. He is the one who is bringing them together.”

  Then she was gone.

  Marlow spun to the others, their faces like Halloween masks in the half-light.

  “What does she mean?” he asked.

  He was answered by another booming pulse of not-sound, one that pounded his internal organs.

  “What does she mean?” he said again when the sensation had passed.

  “You tell us,” Pan replied. “You tell us who he really is.”

  Charlie, just Charlie, always Charlie.

  And there was no time to answer anyway because the elevator began to slow, rattling to a halt on the next level down. Slowly the bullpen rose into view, the huge space buried in shadow. All but a handful of the lights on the ceiling had blown but Marlow could still see the stains on the concrete floor—dried copper-colored puddles that must have once been the Engineers, been the Lawyers, been Betty, been Seth.

  He swallowed a throatful of bile but his rage pushed it back up again, choking him.

  How could Charlie have done this?

  They crunched to a halt and Herc grabbed the gates.

  “You shoot first, ask questions never,” he said, his fingers flexing on the pistol. “Marlow?”

  Marlow remembered the gun, pulled it out. His palms were so sweaty he almost dropped it. Herc reached over, flicked something on the weapon.

  “Safety’s off,” the old guy said. “Just point and shoot.”

  “Point and shoot,” Marlow repeated.

  Herc grabbed the gates and wrenched them open. Down here the thrum of the Engine was worse than ever, each pulse like something had been detonated inside Marlow’s soul. He waited for Herc and Pan to move then he stepped out into the bullpen. There was no sign of life but most of the basketball-court-sized room was cloaked in darkness, and anything could have been hiding there, watching them.

  “Oh, crud,” said Pan. Marlow followed her gaze to the side. The bank of supercomputers that sat there had been smashed to pieces, glass and metal and plastic strewn everywhere. It took a second for it to sink in, and when it did he thought he felt his heart actually crumble to dust inside his chest.

  The computers were what the Engineers needed to crack the contracts.

  Without them, they didn’t stand a chance.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” said Truck. “Why haven’t they busted Marlow’s contract?”

  Herc had pushed himself out into the dark like a boat leaving harbor. Even with the muscles, even with the gun, he looked too vulnerable out there.

  “Maybe they were worried we’d come,” he said. “Maybe they thought we’d take it back.”

  “Hardly.”

  The voice came from the other side of the room, a girl’s voice, and the shock of it made Marlow jump. He dropped the gun and it clattered onto the floor. By the time he’d scooped it up again some more of the bulbs overhead had blinked on, pockets of light appearing in the night. Each one contained a handful of Engineers, all dressed in black. By the time the final light had sputtered to life there must have been twenty of them, more maybe.

  Marlow held up the gun, and the sound of it rattling in his hands was the loudest thing in the room.

  “I wouldn’t,” said the same voice. The redhead stepped into a spotlight, brushing her hair from her eyes. She was bleeding from the battle on the street, and she looked as pissed off as ever. She still held one of her impossible blades. “Drop the guns. Then put your hands behind your back. Try anything else and it will be the last thing you do before the demons come collect you.”

  The Engine pulsed beneath them, a vibration that made the whole room shiver, which made the light fittings swing. It was like they were in an air raid shelter, bombs raining down. Herc stood there with his gun, Pan with her crossbow. Everybody armed, nobody moving.

  “Last chance,” the redhead said.

  “We drop our guns, you kill us anyway,” Pan spat back. “Might as well go out fighting.”

  “If we’d wanted to kill you, we would have killed you,” she shouted back. All around her the other Engineers shifted uneasily. The tension in the air was electric, making Marlow’s hair stand on end. Just how much power was in this room? And what kind of power? If every one of those Engineers had traded for something then they would be unstoppable. “On the train, in the street. We could have killed you.”

  “We kicked your scrawny ass on the train,” said Truck.

  “Yeah?” said another voice, a guy stepping out of the crowd. It was him, the Magpie who had pulled Night to her death. He must have teleported out of the other girl’s body before they hit the ground. “Tell that to your little friend.”

  Truck moved, fast, his fists clenched. Herc shot out an arm and grounded him, growling out an order.

  “You’re too late, anyway,” the girl said, placing a calming arm of her own on the other guy. “The Engines are united.”

  As if on cue the room shook with another bone-shattering pulse of sound—an almost subsonic howl, like the entire planet was screaming.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Herc. “World’s still here.”

  The girl shook her head.

  “You really are that stupid,” she said. “All this time and you still don’t know. Mammon said that’s what it was, but I didn’t think there was any way anyone could be so deluded.”

  “Look, this is nice and all,” said Herc. “But you either tell us where Mammon is and get the hell out of the way, or you kill us. I’m old, and tired, and you are really starting to piss me off.”

  “Mammon is here,” said the girl. “He is down in the Engine. He would like to speak with you.”

  What? Marlow shot a glance at Pan and she met it, her tho
ughts carved into every line of her face.

  This has to be a trap.

  “Charlie is there, too,” said the redhead, looking at Marlow. “He needs to show you something.”

  “Yeah?” said Marlow, the tremor in his voice echoing around the room. “Show me what?”

  “The truth,” said the girl. “The stupid, awful truth.”

  “That you’re about to open the gates of hell,” said Herc. “That you’re about to drown the world in demons and fire.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, Herc, the truth that we’re trying to save the world,” she said. “We’re trying to save it from you.”

  THE TRUTH

  “Bullshit!”

  Pan’s fury ignited inside her, bursting from her mouth as a scream and from her fingers as a blast of white lightning. It snapped across the room, whipcrack fast, punching into the redhead and sending her tumbling backward into the dark. She aimed her other hand and blasted out a second strike, this one aimed upward.

  The lights exploded, a fireworks show of sparks ripping across the ceiling. Then darkness, punctuated by the blinding bark of Herc’s Desert Eagle and the flash of Truck’s shotgun.

  Somebody yelled in pain, in panic, the enemy Engineers scattering. A pulse of burning plasma appeared from the shadows, crackling as it tore across the floor—somebody fighting back. Pan fired again, blindly, then felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Get down to the Engine,” growled Herc. “Take Marlow. You two are the only ones with powers, the only ones who can beat him.”

  Something swooped through the air above them, a dark shape that cried out with a human voice. Pan could hear Taupe shrieking something in French, the sound of his assault rifle deafening.

  “We’ll hold ’em off best we can,” Herc said, firing another couple of shots across the room.

  Pan nodded, retreating. She backed into Marlow and he grabbed her arm, both of them running into the open elevator.

  “Pan,” Herc yelled, his face a blur against the dark, his eyes two shards of steel. “Whatever happens down there, whatever he says, just remember who you are.” He ducked as another wave of plasma seared its way across the room, igniting somebody. Friendly fire. The enemy Engineers were attacking one another in their confusion. Marlow grabbed the gates and hauled them closed, pushing the button for the bottom floor. “And, Pan,” Herc called after them. “You never forget what you’ve done, yeah? You never forget that the world wouldn’t be here without you.”

  Then he was gone, his voice fading behind the grinding roar of the elevator. Pan reached for the button, wanted to drag it back up and join in the fight. She couldn’t leave him, not Herc, not when he needed her.

  But her battle was with something else.

  Something infinitely worse.

  She shook her tingling fingers, breathing hard. Marlow was pacing from side to side like a caged tiger.

  “We can’t beat him,” he said. “We can’t.”

  She stood in his way and grabbed the scruff of his T-shirt, waiting until his big, frightened eyes met hers. The elevator rumbled downward, ever downward, carrying them right to hell’s front door. The Engine was summoning her, each pulse of sound a clarion call she felt in the flesh of her brain. Her fear was so pure, so bright inside her that it didn’t feel real.

  It would, though, she knew, when she came face-to-face with Mammon.

  “We can’t,” said Marlow, trying to tug loose. “You’ve seen him, he’s too powerful.”

  “Marlow,” she said, holding him tight. “You need to focus.”

  “On what?” he shot back. “On the fact that we’re about to get killed? That we’re going to get taken?”

  The sounds of battle overhead had almost faded, plunging them into the closest thing to silence she had heard for a long time.

  The calm before the storm, she thought, inhaling it, hoping that the sudden quiet would help calm her churning terror.

  “We have to go back,” said Marlow, hammering at the button. “We have to go, get to the surface. Someone else will do this, someone else will—”

  She leaned in without thinking, and kissed him, pushing her lips against his until his lips stopped moving. She didn’t think it was possible for his eyes to grow any wider but they did, his words drying up in his throat. He tasted of copper and mint, his breath heavy and hot against her tongue. He opened his mouth and she made to pull back, but didn’t. It just felt so good to be close to somebody, even if it was him. She rested her arms lightly on his waist, feeling him tremble, feeling how fragile he was, as if she pressed too hard he would shatter like glass. He put his arms around her, too, his fingers tickling the small of her back. They stood there, connected, for a small eternity.

  Then his tongue brushed against her lips and she reared back, wiping a sleeve over her mouth. The elevator was slowing, pulling her back into a world she had almost managed to forget about.

  Marlow put his fingers to his lips as if there might still be a piece of her there. He was gulping air.

  “You were losing it, I needed to shut you up,” she explained, turning away so that he wouldn’t see her cheeks blaze. “It worked.”

  They shuddered to a stop and she grabbed the grate, pausing for a moment. Beyond was the vault room, the last barrier between the world and the Engine. The door was several feet thick, designed to withstand an atomic blast. It could keep out even the strongest of Engineers.

  And it was open.

  “Maybe he really does just want to talk,” she said, tugging at the stubborn gates. Marlow gave her a hand, wrenching them open. He put a hand on her arm and she shot him a look that made him let go immediately.

  “You started it,” he said. But the fear had gone from him, that blind panic. He even managed a smile. “One more, you know, before we die a horrible death and get dragged to hell?”

  “We make it out of this,” she said, “then you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  It was a safe bet to make. She was pretty sure they weren’t getting out of this one.

  She took a step forward, then felt his hand on her arm again. When she turned, though, the smile had gone and he was frowning.

  “Look, Pan, I should have mentioned this before.” He cast a look at the vault door, chewing something over. “Charlie, I spoke to him, back when he was in the infirmary. He said something.”

  “What?” she said when he didn’t continue.

  “He said that I needed to be careful, because they were lying to me.”

  “What?” she said. Mammon had told her the exact same thing on the train. “Who’s lying?”

  “He didn’t say. That’s all he had the strength for.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Pan. “Mammon is the liar. Ostheim always called him the father of all lies. You shouldn’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth, and if he got to your friend then you shouldn’t trust a word that comes out of his, either. Come on.”

  But the doubt followed her into the room, nagging at her. They’re lying to you. And why had Mammon not just killed her there and then, on the train, rather than trying to talk. It just didn’t make sense. She checked her crossbow, the first bolt loaded and ready to fire. If she had a lucky shot, if she buried it right in his rancid heart, then there would be no more lies.

  No more lies, no more fear, just relief.

  The thought of it was overpowering, propelling her across the room. She splayed the fingers of her free hand, the current dancing between them, waiting for its orders. The Engine spoke to her in the language of hell, those same images flashing across her vision, burrowing into the meat of her brain—death, torture, screams, flames, all so familiar now that she dismissed them with a grunt, forcing herself through the door.

  And there it was, the Engine.

  She had never seen it like this, every one of its countless clockwork parts in motion. It looked vast, stretching from horizon to horizon and lit by the thousand lights embedded in the distant ceiling of the cavern
. And it looked alive, like it might just pull itself up, collect its scattered pieces, and haul its bulk out into the world.

  Something exploded deep inside the Engine, a pillar of thick, red flame curling up and pooling in the hollows of the ceiling. There was a pulse of sound, of feeling, and the Engine roared, the collective cry of billions and billions of cogs and gears and needles and springs. It roared loud enough to end her, to end the entire world. It roared so loud that she almost didn’t see the figure standing by the black pool.

  Mammon.

  He stood with his back to her, staring into the dark water. He could have been mistaken for a normal human being except for the way his body seemed to shimmer, glitching from side to side like she was watching a video in fast-forward. She knew it was him, though, he was kicking out an evil stink that made her soul hurt.

  She didn’t hesitate, not for a second, knowing that if she did she would never be able to move again. She started down the stairs, taking them two at a time, the crunch of her footsteps lost behind the world-ending groan of the Engine.

  “Find Charlie,” she yelled back, feeling Marlow on her heels. “I got him.”

  No time to wait for a reply. She was already close to the bottom, the Engine sprawling out to her side, its deafening orchestra of clicks like an army of insects about to swarm onto the rock and devour her.

  She ignored it, ignored everything except for him.

  Skidding onto one knee, she placed the crossbow to her shoulder.

  One chance. One chance. Don’t mess it up.

  Mammon was starting to turn, slowly. The shape of him wobbled and blurred, like he wasn’t really there. But he was there. She knew it. She could feel it in the way she wanted to open her head with a hammer and claw out her brains. She could feel it in every screaming cell of her body as he turned to face her.

  Mammon. The man she’d been trained to fear, trained to hunt, trained to kill.

  She fired, the bolt humming as it shot from the crossbow, arcing through the air, a flash of iron as it burned toward Mammon’s heart.

  He snatched out a hand and caught it.

  Pan, he said, his voice a skewer in her ears, puncturing her.