The Rising

by Temple Mathews

  “Spin the wheel!” he shouted.

  And Loreli began to spin.

  Inside the vault, Will tried to dodge another lunging shedemon, but she managed to kick him in the head. His nose gushed blood. He went down. She had a dagger and was about to stab him in the heart when he hit her in the torso with a Power Chopper. It buried itself in her chest, churned, and exploded upward, blowing her head off.

  On the altar, the Dark Lord’s body trembled. The body appeared strong and powerful. Will wondered, Why doesn’t the beast rise and fight?

  The three remaining shedemons were fanning out, moving with blinding speed. Seeing the beast’s body move brought a wave of painful memories into Will’s brain. He fought them, trying to clear his head, Gotta keep focused! But his oldest friend, his reliable anger, surged up within him and distracted him.

  Screeching a war cry, Blue Streak got to him and sliced him with her razor-sharp nails. Man, he hated these creatures! They were nothing but pain machines. Blue Streak continued her assault and got in some good licks before he managed a powerful kick to the side of her head. Her eyes went white. She was temporarily blind and swooped up into the darkness.

  Will’s neck was bleeding and his anger flared again. Shedemons came at him from the left and the right. If Will wasn’t careful, his anger was going to bring him down. He breathed deeply, and was able to dial it down some. He flung a Taser Dart at one of his attackers, immobilizing her long enough to hack off her hands with his Megashocker. The other two attacked, and he took hits from them as they sliced and diced, but he was able to dodge and kick and punch his way out, finally blasting them with the last two loads from his Flare Pistols and his remaining Power Choppers. When the dust settled he was aching and bloody, but he was standing in a field of shedemon corpses. Blue Streak was not among them.

  Will looked up into the darkness for her. He saw nothing. So he stepped over the corpses and approached the Dark Lord’s body. He looked at the creature lying there, twitching. He stepped closer.

  The crowd of demonteens watching Loreli was in a frenzy now, all eyes locked upon her as she rotated on the wooden wheel. Rocco threw a knife. Thunk! A cheer. Thunk! Another cheer. Rocco threw two knives at once, and when they missed he angrily threw a third, sidearm. This one connected, slicing the tip of Loreli’s little finger. She cried out in pain, but did not open her eyes. Blood had been raised. The third stage.

  “BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!” cried the demons.

  “Stop the wheel!” said Rocco.

  Two of Rocco’s goons stopped the wheel and cut Loreli loose. She stepped to the ground, her eyes still closed as she shook her hair and casually smoothed her duster.

  “Open your eyes,” said Rocco.

  She did. They were still a shimmering green and radiated health. She wasn’t infected! There was a moment of shocked silence. Then the demons roared in anger.

  Loreli went to work, moving with inhuman speed. She reached into her duster and brought out handfuls of spheres and orbs, which she threw with agility and precision. She threw them high into the ceiling and low to the ground. Orbs exploding above formed clouds of sparkling heavy gasses that unleashed a toxic rain while the earth erupted in flames of emerald. Backlit by the pyrotechnic show she’d unleashed, Loreli cut a fearsome figure, a Valkyrie from Hell—or, in this case, thought the terrified demons, from Heaven. It was chaos on a grand scale.

  Exploding one more sphere to mask her escape, Loreli vanished from view.

  In the vault, Will was frozen with rage. Staring at the Dark Lord, he was reminded of all the pain this creature had visited upon him—how the monster had killed his father and even now tormented his mother.

  “Return her to me!” said Will.

  The Dark Lord said nothing. But his left hand slowly clenched into a fist—except for the middle finger, which remained stiff. Will was so angered by this gesture that he began to see red spots. At first they were like raindrops on a windshield, these tiny blotches of red, but then they spread, melding together and forming a film that covered his vision. The beast’s voice spoke in his mind: Bring me pain and I will visit upon you the wrath of a thousand hounds of Hell!

  “Then I will end it here and she will come of her own accord!” shouted Will. Still the Dark Lord remained silent. It was time to put an end to this beast once and for all.

  “I’m going to enjoy this,” Will said.

  He reached up and tapped the code into the Power Rod retrieval patch on the back of his neck. As he waited—one second, two seconds—he visualized using his Power Rod to hack the Prince of Darkness into a hundred pieces, forever ending his reign. Three seconds . . . four . . . five. Where was his Power Rod? He tapped the code in again. Five more seconds passed. Ten. The Power Rod did not come.

  Will reprimanded himself. He’d been so obsessed with finding and destroying the Dark Lord that he hadn’t thought it through, hadn’t done his due diligence. He should have deduced that at 666 feet beneath sea level, the retrieval patch’s signal might be blocked.

  It didn’t matter. He still had his Megashocker. He could do the deed with that. His brain was thrumming with anger, his vision blurred with scarlet. He turned his Megashocker up to maximum power and envisioned how he was going to thrust it through the Dark Lord’s eye sockets, obliterating his sinful, malevolent brain.

  “Time to face your doom!” said Will.

  Unnoticed, Loreli had entered behind him, moving silently between the unused urns of blood. And as Will began to remove the Dark Lord’s helmet, Loreli raised her dagger. It was time to fulfill her destiny. That it would involve the death of her own flesh and blood was tragic but necessary. Will yanked the helmet off the Dark Lord. It lifted into his hand so easily—too easily!

  There was nothing inside.

  Will stood in shock. Loreli, too, was dazed and lowered her dagger. The two of them stared in disbelief. The Prince of Darkness had lost his head.

  Chapter Seventeen: Inferno

  Will was frozen. The sight of the Dark Lord’s headless body filled him with fear and confusion. But the Dark Lord was not frozen. The headless beast’s hands wrapped around the axe handles by his side, and then he sat up, ready to kill. Still Will stood transfixed. Loreli, too, had been rendered temporarily immobile by the horrific sight, but the gears in her brain turned swiftly as she formulated a revised plan.

  Loreli grabbed Will’s shoulder. “Will, come on! We have to get out of here.”

  The sound of her voice spurred Will to action, and he started backing away from the altar, holding the Megashocker in front of him.

  The Dark Lord’s corpse leapt awkwardly off the marble slab and, his back to Will and Loreli, began blindly swinging his mighty axes. They cut through the air with terrifying whooshing sounds. The headless ogre moved in fits and starts, twitchy and convulsive, but the Dark Lord’s power was still there.

  And Will saw red again. He’d failed. He’d been moments from his goal, and he’d failed. The Dark Lord still lived. As the Dark Lord’s body reached them, Will dodged a swipe, then raked the Megashocker across the beast’s muscular back. Unable to scream since he had no head, the monster merely cringed in pain, then whirled and frantically hacked at the air again, one of his mighty axes crashing into a stone column, crumbling it.

  Pulling away from Loreli, who was trying to tug him toward the doorway, Will attacked again and again with the Megashocker as the Dark Lord’s headless body spastically fought on, swinging the massive axes, lashing out in every direction. Will had to block several of the Dark Lord’s blows, and somehow his body—though bereft of head and thus of sight, and still moving awkwardly—was beginning to sense where its enemy was. Will took a step forward, fully prepared to duel to the death with the twitching, headless monster. The situation terrified Loreli.

  “Will, no! We have to leave this place now!”

  Will again slashed the Megashocker across the Dark Lord’s scaly back. “I’m going to cut him to ribbons!”

  Will l
anced the monster’s shoulder, the fiery Megashocker blade sinking deep into his flesh.

  “It’s futile!” Loreli yelled “You can cut him into a thousand pieces and they’ll only gather them and the body will regenerate!”

  Will continued to attack in a red rage, thinking This is for you, Edward, my real father. This is for you! Will struck at the beast mercilessly, slashing at him over and over with the Megashocker. A couple of times he thought he heard the sound of metal striking metal.

  Loreli moved to stop him, to try one last time to talk some sense into him. It was an unwise decision, because out of sheer luck the Dark Lord blindly swung his axe and it cut Loreli’s shoulder. She cried out in pain and dropped, her body swiftly going into shock.

  “Loreli!” Will erupted with fury and put the Dark Lord down with a flying kick. But seeing Loreli injured was enough to break the rage’s hold on him. The massive beast toppled sideways, and Will knelt down and scooped his sister into his arms. He ran, carrying her, down the length of the entry tunnel.

  The main cavern was still reeling from Loreli’s alchemy, but the smoke had begun to clear, and as Will came lurching out from under the archway he was spotted by Rocco and a phalanx of his minions.

  “There! Get them!”

  Will and Loreli were trapped. Led by Rocco, dozens of enraged demons rushed toward them, many of them bearing swords, maces, and lances.

  Loreli was bleeding badly and losing consciousness. She knew she was passing out, and, kicking into self-preservation mode, she used her left hand—her right was totally useless now, due to the gaping wound on her shoulder—to open her duster.

  “The Flame Sticks,” she rasped. “In my coat. Take one!”

  Will reached in and grabbed one.

  “Break it in half . . . the lake . . .”

  Will understood. He cracked the Flame Stick in half and then threw it. It burst forth with a flare as it flew into Fire Lake, which erupted like napalm. The roar was deafening. It was a deadly and beautiful diversion, because the lake not only caught fire but exploded like the surface of the sun, molten lava leaping out and splashing down, landing atop terrified demonteens, who shrieked as they burned to death.

  Will bent time and ran like the wind, weaving his way through the confused and frightened hordes. Seeing the life draining out of Loreli spurred him on, so he ran even faster. As he passed Rocco, he leapt, twisted, and kicked, catching Rocco in the throat. As Rocco dropped to the ground, his eyes bulging, Will ran up a set of stone stairs with Loreli in his arms. Up and up they went, finally blasting out of the doorway in Smiling Bob’s Underground Tours.

  Will looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and she was unconscious. He felt her neck. Her pulse was weak.

  He rushed her out the door, onto the street, up Yesler and into his parked EVO, where he put her in the passenger seat. He pulled a six-inch healing balm patch out of the glove compartment and placed it on her wound. Then he fired up the EVO. A woman in a gigantic Chevy SUV had pulled up and was blocking him. He laid on his horn. She was on the phone and waved him away dismissively. He got out and screamed at her.

  “Move your car!”

  Again she swatted at him like he was nothing more than a mosquito. Will reached a finger to the back of his neck and tapped in a code on the Power Rod retrieval patch. He could hear the rod screaming down through the sky and held out his palm. Whap! He activated it. With two swipes, he chopped the SUV down to the size of a Mini Cooper. The woman actually kept yammering on the phone for a few seconds before she realized what had just happened. Then she started screaming. But Will was already in his EVO and pulling out past her. He shot through the city streets.

  In minutes he was at the mansion, carrying Loreli in through the garage. Rudy and Emily were squabbling in the kitchen over the last piece of Patty’s Pizza when Will rushed through the door with Loreli in his arms.

  “What happened?” said Rudy.

  “Watch the street!” said Will.

  Rudy moved to the window and stared outside, the whites of his eyes going huge.

  “Are they gonna, like, attack or something?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, just keep an eye out!”

  Rudy glanced at Emily and saw that she was trembling. He wasn’t very good at talking to girls, and Emily made him especially nervous. But he figured it was time for him to say something that sounded brave.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he told her.

  She looked out the window, her eyes wild with fear. Rudy wanted to say more, but he couldn’t think of anything. He felt like he’d failed her. But when he patted her ever so softly on her shoulder, she didn’t flinch or turn away.

  • • •

  Will dashed down the hall and into the guest room. Loreli’s lips were blue. He gently placed her in the bed and quickly changed the healing patch on her shoulder. He touched her face. It was cold. Again he felt for a pulse. Still there, but growing even weaker. She’d lost a lot of blood, and even with the healing patch, she needed fluids and she needed them fast. He set up an I.V., then slapped up a vein on her arm, pressed the needle into it, and taped the tubing to her forearm. The saline started to drip. Then he took her temperature. She was hot, 101 degrees. He wiped the perspiration off her forehead with a damp cloth.

  “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to make it,” he said. He wanted to sound reassuring, but his voice had the slightest tremor of falsity in it. He wasn’t only trying to convince her, but himself as well. She had to be okay; anything else would be a disaster. The fact that she’d been wounded was his fault, and he felt the weight of responsibility bearing down on him. He checked under the new healing patch. The chemicals were doing their job, and already her deep wound was looking better, coagulating rapidly, the tissue repairing itself.

  Pacing like a panther at the window, Rudy kept up a vigilant watch. But the mansion would not come under siege this night.

  Hearing the commotion downstairs, Natalie rose from her bed. Her brain kept repeating the scene in the school hallway with Will and Loreli on a loop. It was like a knife in her gut seeing them touching, whispering, their lips meeting. She had skipped the rest of the school day, just walked right out like a zombie and wandered the streets. With each step she’d taken, she’d asked for answers and gotten none, even though she’d walked for miles. When she came home, she’d taken a long hot shower. Afterward she’d once again applied the purloined lip-gloss, and in minutes her mind was racing along the fringes of anger and despair. Every time she closed her eyes she was assaulted with painful images, her mind crowded with nightmarish visions of the boy she loved in the arms of the emerald-eyed vixen.

  She wouldn’t talk to Emily and she refused to answer her door when Will knocked on it before he went out. She didn’t want to hear him say where he was going because she already knew. He was going out with her. Now Will had come back, there was noise downstairs, and Natalie felt like she was in some kind of weird limbo. Had he brought Loreli back there? Could Natalie possibly endure the pain of seeing Will acting out feelings for someone else? She doubted it. But she couldn’t just hide up in her room. It felt weak. She opened her closet and stared at the clothes inside. She would get dressed, then go downstairs and face whatever she found there.

  In the guest room Loreli opened her eyes to find Will sitting by her bed, watching her. Seeing that she’d regained consciousness, he smiled and made a peace sign.

  “How many fingers?”

  “Two.”

  “Very good. How are you feeling?”

  Loreli shifted, rising up slightly on her pillow, and winced as pain shot through her shoulder. She could still feel the blade cutting into it. But she was strong, and she willed the pain away and conjured up a brave smile.

  “Better. Thanks to you.”

  Will’s face darkened with guilt. “It’s thanks to me that you were almost killed in the first place.”

  Loreli nodded. She wasn’t going to argue. Will’s anger had oversha
dowed his judgment in a tight spot. He had been driven by it, ruled by it, forced to obey it.

  It was as if Will were reading her mind. “I got mad,” he said, “and the red rage came over me. I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have been. The thing is, when I get mad, I get stronger, and if I’m stronger I feel like I can kick ass. But . . . it doesn’t matter how strong you are if you’re acting stupid.”

  “The mind is a far deadlier weapon than the fist,” said Loreli.

  “Yeah, I get that,” said Will.

  She reached up with a weak hand and touched his arm.

  “I understand the feeling, Will. I really do. I used to feel the same way. I’d get so mad that I’d lose control. It’s who we are; it’s part of us. And it’s because of him. His blood.”

  Will’s interest was piqued. “Did you see red, too?”

  “Yeah, and as it got more intense, sometimes things would just go . . . black. When I was in ninth grade, down in San Francisco, I was following some demons who’d been harassing this homeless family in the Tenderloin. They got the dad drunk and baited him into fighting another homeless guy for money. They gave both men baseball bats and made them go at it so they could videotape it. The guy’s family, including his little girl, watched. She started crying. I couldn’t take it, I just started shaking, and the red madness took over. I threw down some smoke and used the bats on the demon creeps who’d started it all. I totally lost control . . . just beat them right into the ground. I was so intent on putting them down, I didn’t see another demon attacking the family. The little girl was killed. I can still see her eyes sometimes at night when I can’t sleep. After that night, I knew I had to deal with it.”

  “What do you mean ‘deal with it’?”

  Loreli’s eyes softened. “There’s a way to make it go away.”

  Will felt a great yearning rise up within him. But his logical mind wrested control.

  “That doesn’t seem possible.”

  “I’d have thought that after all we’ve seen in this life, you and me, that you of all people would know that anything’s possible.”