The World Ends Tonight

by Wood, Rick

  Martin nodded absentmindedly, his eyes turning to the vacant body of the heir of hell. It hung loosely in the air, its head bowed, unconscious.

  Vulnerable.

  So still, so easy… This could be their chance.

  All it would take would be one measly strike.

  “We could kill it,” Martin acknowledged.

  “Pardon?”

  “We could kill the heir of hell right now. End this war. Stop everything. I could get a spell and cut its throat, it would be so easy.”

  Cassy peered back at Martin, realising the logic of what he was saying – then realising what it would cost them.

  “You could,” she confirmed. “But what about Eddie?”

  Martin looked to the heir, then back to Cassy. His thoughts were an ethical puzzle, searching and grasping for the right answer.

  Surely an angel would know the correct decision to make?

  “I would guess he wouldn’t survive,” Martin answered, blurting it out in a faded burst of confidence that allowed him to suggest such a thing out loud. “And neither would Derek, I imagine.”

  “You would kill my brother? Your mentor?”

  “Isn’t that what you brought me into this world for? Isn’t that what you said to me when you first met me; that you need me to kill Edward King?”

  Cassy’s face told a thousand stories, none of them clear or good. Martin could see the same conundrum firing through her thoughts, searching for a right answer, and coming up with nothing but unappealing possibilities.

  “You’re right.” She nodded hesitantly, as if she couldn’t bear to say it. “This decision lies on you.”

  “That’s not fair. Why do all the decisions lay on me?”

  “Because that’s what you were born for. Martin, you could kill the heir right now, end all this, and possibly lose Eddie and Derek in the collateral damage. Two sacrifices to save the entire world.”

  “Or…?” Martin mused, knowing the answer.

  “Or… you could have faith in Eddie.”

  Martin shook his head, closing his eyes and allowing his heavy mind to drop. His head continued to shake more and more vigorously until he was waving his hands and turning his back on both the heir and Cassy, stumbling a few steps away.

  Cassy rushed to his side, grabbing hold of his hand.

  “Do not run from your decisions, Martin.”

  “Oh, fuck you!” he moaned, swinging around and glaring at her. “I’m soddin’ seventeen! Most kids my age would be snogging some girl behind the bike sheds at school, not deciding who gets to live and who gets to die!”

  “It is a burden, I don’t contest that.”

  “Fuck you, Cassy, fuck you! I’m fed up of people spewing wisdomous crap in my direction like it changes a bloody thing. I still have to make this decision. I still have to decide. And it’s not fair!”

  “Fair?” Cassy forced a knowing but frustrated laugh. “I was killed before I reached the age of ten, forced to endure over a decade of torture in hell, then once I was finally exorcised from the prince of hell called Balam, I didn’t go on to an eternity of happiness because I was needed as an angel to save my brother! We all have our burdens to bear, Martin, so man up and deal with it.”

  Martin nodded feebly, peering at the huge, vile body curled in a lump behind Cassy.

  He looked over his shoulder at Bandile, hovering with humiliation a few yards behind them. They had him now. They had a chance of bringing them back.

  “I just don’t know what to do. What would you say?”

  She placed a firm, reassuring hand on his shoulder.

  “A wise woman once said that faith in Edward King is never faith misplaced.”

  Martin nodded.

  Then that is what he would do.

  He would have faith in Eddie. He would show loyalty to Derek. He would fight for Cassy’s family.

  Just as the decision was made, a bolt of fire flew into the ground beside Cassy, sending her flailing onto her back. She climbed to her knees with Martin’s help, only for him to be struck onto his front at the same time.

  A ravenous bear with bloody saliva dripping from his jaw marched across the field with an aggressive eagerness, surging toward them.

  Martin could only watch in astonishment as the demon atop the bear was revealed. Three heads: one human, one of a bull, and one of a ram – each snapping their jaws toward him. Its muscular torso gave way to muscular arms with clenched fists attached, bloodied and ready to do harm.

  “Oh, dear God…” whimpered Cassy, recognising the prince of hell immediately.

  “What is it?” Martin demanded.

  “It’s… him,” she gasped, shuffling backwards, desperate to escape its presence.

  Martin stood strong, standing between her and it, confident posture and fiery eyes.

  The demon grinned.

  Bandile grinned.

  Martin got ready to protect an angel of heaven from the sickening prince of hell he instantly understood went by the name of Balam.

  47

  Derek tried searching for an exit, but it didn’t take long to see that there was no way out. Stones disappeared into the sky as far as could see and there wasn’t much to look at on ground level. A faint smell of smoke, however, lingered in the distance.

  Still, Derek looked at the hazy blue light, bemused.

  “I don’t understand,” Derek exclaimed, stroking his beard.

  “What is it you don’t understand?” replied Eddie.

  “Think about it. When they took Cassy’s soul, they kept it in hell and tortured it.”

  “And…?”

  Derek turned to Eddie, deep in contemplation.

  “Well, why haven’t they done that to you?” he asked. “And what’s with the blue light?”

  Eddie’s face twisted into realisation. Derek was right. It wasn’t consistent.

  “You’re right. Why would they keep me trapped in a room like this?”

  “It’s not torture, is it?”

  “The boredom makes you crazy,” Eddie pointed out defensively.

  “Yes, absolutely – but removing organs and twisting your insides would make you far more insane. So why haven’t they done that?”

  They both remained silent, considering possibilities. How was the devil benefitting by keeping Eddie trapped in this room?

  It wasn’t dark or full of fire. It wasn’t swarming with demons. It wasn’t causing agony from roasting him in a pit of flames.

  Unless they needed him to be in this room…

  “Of course,” Derek declared.

  “What?”

  “These walls, they need to keep you trapped.”

  “To keep me trapped?”

  “Yes, as otherwise, you may be susceptible to escape.”

  “Derek, I’ve missed you, man, but speak English.”

  Derek chuckled lightly, the first genuine laugh he had given in a long time. It was good to be back with an old friend, even in such dire circumstances.

  He approached Eddie with an air of bemusement, a grin spread across his cheeks.

  “These walls were designed to keep you in here; that’s why they put you here,” Derek informed Eddie. “They don’t want to torture you, they just want to keep you trapped, so you can’t break through them. There must be a reason for that!”

  “There’s a reason they aren’t torturing me?”

  “Think about it. There is a soft blue light on the walls. Blue is a calming colour. Why would they want to keep you calm in hell?”

  Eddie’s eyes grew as he finally started to realise what Derek’s hypothesis was.

  “When I got angry before, that’s when I…” he trailed off.

  “Exactly!” Derek announced. “Hell thrives on anger and hostility. They have needed to subdue you to keep you trapped. Otherwise, you’ll be accessing that part of the heir that is built by hell – that is made of anger – and you cannot be contained by something that you are made of! That is why they won’t torture you,
because that will make you angry! That is why they have put a faint blue light in the room!”

  Derek clicked his fingers, delighted at his own intelligence at fathoming the complicated puzzle.

  “So, what, I’m just supposed to suddenly get angry and burst out of here?”

  “I don’t know, Eddie, these are just thoughts.”

  Derek studied Eddie carefully as his friend aimlessly wandered, hands behind his back in deep consideration.

  “You don’t necessarily need to get angry, that wasn’t what gave you your breakthrough,” Derek spoke. “It was that you were aligning with the side of you that hell created. You need to access that piece of the heir that you are a part of. That piece of the heir will get you out.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  Derek shrugged. Such a huge revelation, yet he was still expected to have all the answers.

  “I don’t know. But you did it before.”

  Eddie sighed. He meandered a few more steps and dropped to his knees, sitting on the floor, burying his head in his hands.

  Derek crouched beside him.

  “What is it?”

  “I just… I’m fed up. I miss everyone, Derek. I just want this to be over.”

  “I know.”

  “I know I can’t see Kelly after what happened, but there are still people waiting on earth for me. Like you. Like Jenny.”

  Derek grew confused.

  Jenny?

  Oh, dear Lord, he thinks she’s alive.

  “I… Eddie…” Derek attempted. “Did you say you wanted to see Jenny?”

  “So much.”

  “…Jenny’s dead.”

  Eddie’s eyes widened. He twisted his head slowly toward Derek, full of a hundred emotions firing back and forth, contorting his gut. It broke Derek’s heart to have to tell Eddie this, to watch it torture him and twist his insides like Derek knew it would.

  He just hadn’t even thought.

  “How did she die?” Eddie whispered, as if unable to say it aloud.

  “You, Eddie. You killed her.”

  48

  Eddie’s mind filled with a thousand thrashing cymbals, crashing and collapsing into a chaos of darkness.

  In a sudden instant of clarity, he saw it; Jenny’s face. Devastated. Overwhelmed.

  He was in the eyes of the heir.

  “No, Eddie, look at me. Please face me.”

  Jenny’s distraught, tearful face peered back at him. Her clothes were getting wrecked with the torrential, beating rain pounding against her ripped top, but she didn’t seem to care. She stared up at him, refusing to back down, refusing to look scared.

  In her hand, she clutched a photo. Eddie squinted to see it and, once the image grew faintly clear amongst the bullets of water, he saw it was of him and Jenny.

  She was not backing down. She was not trying to kill the heir, not trying to oppose it – she believed Eddie was in there somewhere.

  Eddie’s heart pounded. Though he knew it was the past, though he could do nothing about it, he willed himself to shrink to her level, to withdraw his claws. As it was he remained stationary, in the heir’s body, crying through the heir’s eyes.

  “Eddie, please, I miss you so much,” she continued, pleading, beseeching him. “You’ve been there my whole life, and now I’ve had to survive without you, and I just can’t. I can’t survive without you. I may as well be dead without you.”

  The words of the memory were like a hundred stinging nettles attacking his body at once. His face scrunched up into uncontrollable weeping. He couldn’t believe it. It was the way she was risking her life for him, the things she was saying, the way her love for him overshadowed any feeling of doubt in her conviction that Eddie was, at the core, good, and could be saved.

  Her hand reached out and Eddie felt it against the bumps of his face. It wasn’t his face he felt it run down, but the heir’s, yet he still felt every soft touch. The gentle run of her fingers through the fur of his forehead, down his open jaw, outlining his sharp fangs.

  “See, Eddie. It’s just us two. Just us.”

  Eddie wanted to cry out. Wanted to scream at her to turn and run.

  He could feel the heir growing intensely angry. He could feel it biding its time, getting ready to kill.

  A rumble in the distance signified heavy footsteps coming closer.

  “Please, Eddie, we don’t have much time. That sound, it’s an army, come to kill you. You need to come back to me now. Otherwise, it’s too late. It needs to be done now.”

  I’m trying, Jenny. I’m trying, but I don’t know how.

  “Come on, Eddie. It’s time to come home.”

  His mouth opened and his tepid breath hovered out, along with a heavy snarl.

  His claws twitched.

  “This is where you brought me. Our swings. Where we did all our talking. I know you love me.”

  Eddie looked over her shoulder and, sure enough, past the ferocious weather, he could see it.

  The swing set where they had spent many troubled days.

  Eddie running away from his abusive parents.

  Jenny discovering her sexuality.

  Both of them, hand in hand, sharing mutual moments of silence as words were not needed to express how they were feeling. They just knew what would be on each other’s minds.

  Eddie’s eyes opened wide, as did the heir’s. Jenny’s face lit up as if she recognised Eddie’s emotional reaction to the swing set.

  “Oh my God, Eddie, you’re back! I can’t believe you’re actually back.”

  His eyes lingered on her.

  His arm reached out, striking a large claw through the centre of Jenny’s chest.

  Eddie dove backwards, landing hard on the bumpy cell floor.

  He no longer saw out of the heir’s eyes, no longer witnessed the memory. He couldn’t take any more.

  He jumped to his feet, screaming, roaring with tearful anger.

  His fists clenched, his teeth chattered, his whole body shook. Shook like the anger was causing a seizure, like his fury was coursing through every absent vein and surging into every vacant muscle.

  His whole body tensed.

  He swung a fist into the floor, sending a crack running down the middle of the room, an amber glow travelling through the centre of his incarceration.

  Eddie could feel Derek’s eyes watching on in astonishment.

  Eddie didn’t care.

  The one person he loved unconditionally, the one person he needed in his life. The one person who had been there through every punch, every bully, every ounce of pain. Through every moment of anger, of hostility, of solace. She had been there to lend a hand, to dry a tear. She had been there through everything.

  Even when Eddie was absent, she was there, battling for his soul, battling to make her way through to him.

  And she had died because of it.

  That love she had for him had killed her.

  And now it was killing him.

  Enraged, he lifted his body up, opening his palms and lunging a large spurt of fire forward. It turned the surface of the stone black.

  He had made damage to the room.

  Eddie leapt onto the wall, digging his fingers into the cracks between the walls.

  His anger.

  The piece of hell he was a part of.

  That’s what’s letting me do this… Hellish powers work best in hell…

  Eddie grabbed Derek under his arm with ridiculous ease, leaping upwards from one wall to the other.

  Further and further they went, ascending into the distance, continuing until beneath them was no longer visible.

  The further he rose, the more the smell of burning grew. The spit of lava hissed, the smoke choked him, the fires grew warmer.

  He was getting close.

  Finally, he reached the surface. He threw Derek over and onto the ground, then climbed himself onto a cracked, rocky surface.

  He stood tall and strong, surveying his surroundings. As far as the eye could se
e were mounds of stone and the fiery pits of hell. Helpless souls trapped on small pieces of rock surrounded by lava. A wave of heat hitting him, fire licking at his feet, screams and wails of torture filling the air.

  This was it.

  This was hell.

  He had escaped his containment and was standing sturdily amongst the land of the demons.

  The mound of rock he stood upon shuddered and something pounded downwards. Eddie steadied himself, then peered at the monstrosity before him.

  Before Eddie stood Geryon, the guardian of the underworld. Geryon’s three human heads scowled, thrashing their pointed, chattering teeth in anticipation of Eddie’s death.

  “Derek, get back,” Eddie whispered, prompting Derek to hide behind Eddie.

  Derek shrunk into a ball, on his knees, shielding himself from the twisted beast before them.

  Geryon glared at Eddie and snarled.

  Eddie snarled back.

  49

  No time could be wasted.

  Martin leapt forward, throwing fire-ball after fire ball, wave after wave of flamed attacks bombarding the malevolent bastard before him.

  Balam’s bull head snorted and bashed into the ram, its three heads colliding with a raging intensity. His human head growled, irritated by the reaction of its weaker counterparts. Its bearded face opened its mouth wide, revealing a mouth of blood and thick excess saliva.

  The mouth laughed heartily as it drunk in the flames Martin sent hurtling forward like a drunk would down beer.

  Bandile’s deep laughter as he watched on incensed Martin even further. But he had to ignore it. Had to concentrate.

  Spinning his arms in another frantic motion, Martin conjured a violent gust of wind. He lurched his arms forward, forcing a charging Balam to buckle and struggle to keep balance atop his bear.

  Resisting Martin’s defence, Balam pounded toward him, trampling him to the ground beneath the bear’s heavy, bloody paws.

  Martin struggled to climb to his hands, coughing and wheezing.

  Each head atop Balam’s torso jolted toward Cassy, eyes glowing with instant recognition.

  Cassy cowered, stiffening with tepid fear. She turned to run, but heavy gallops resounded behind her and she was lifted in the giant claw of the prince of hell with one swift, effortless swipe.