Together, they walked down the beach toward the demon-possessed car. Seeing it waiting for them, sinister and black, reminded Dru why she had initially feared Hellbringer. And why she could never forget that. It was, after all, a demon.
Seeing her apprehension, Greyson paused before opening the door for her. “Look, I’m sorry about Titus. But you tried your best. What really matters now is that we’re safe.”
Despite her misgivings, she had to nod. “You’re right. We are safe.”
As Dru started to get in the car, a deep gurgling sound from the lake made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She turned to see the scourge rise up like a black wall, towering over them. At the crest of it, she could clearly see a human form suspended in the oil, arms outstretched, head tilted down to glare at her.
Titus.
“Get in!” Greyson got behind the wheel and revved the engine.
As they raced up the beach, Dru turned to watch the vast wave of scourge crash behind them, painting the gravel pitch black. The massive wave rose up again, chasing them like a vast, hungry creature about to devour them.
33
NEVER LET GO
Engine revving, Hellbringer charged headlong through the tunnels. Close behind them, the earth shook as the flood of black scourge crashed through the underground complex.
“Titus isn’t dead,” Dru realized out loud. “He’s alive inside the scourge. And now he’s even more powerful than before.”
Greyson glanced over at her before returning his attention to the tunnel. Evenly spaced lights in the ceiling streaked past the windshield. “That black stuff looked pretty deadly to me.”
“Deadly for people like you and me, yes. But Titus is different. He’s a necromancer. He has absolute control over the scourge. And now he’s become, I don’t know, one with it. I saw his face.” She turned around in the seat to see through the back window. Behind them, the rising flood snuffed out the tunnel lights behind them, one after another.
The sight terrified her.
“He’s in there. He’s part of it now,” she said. “We have to find a way to stop him before he escapes this place and triggers doomsday.”
They rapidly approached a T-intersection, and Greyson spun the wheel, sending them squealing down the left tunnel. The rock walls flashed by in the headlight beams.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Dru asked.
Greyson’s glowing red gaze cut up to the rearview mirror. “Away from that. Fast as possible. But if we hit a dead end, we’re in trouble. Any ideas?”
“Hang on. I can find a way out of here.” Dru pulled the wadded-up blueprint out of the grimy leather tool bag and unfolded it in her lap. Between the intermittent darkness and the lurching motion of the car, it was impossible to read.
Then a map light clicked on, and suddenly Dru could see. She patted the dashboard. “Thanks, Hellbringer.”
“That was me,” Greyson said, pulling his hand back from the light switch. “Another tunnel coming up. Which way?”
She ran her fingers frantically over the map, smoothing out the creases, trying to figure out exactly where they were. They had just come from one of the three lakes, so that narrowed it down. She remembered the walled-off machinery they had passed. Generators, maybe? She looked for the rectangles on the map.
“Two options,” Greyson said, his voice tight. “Slow down and get caught, or take the wrong tunnel and get trapped. I don’t like either one.”
“Don’t slow down, whatever you do! If that scourge catches us—”
“Which way? Left or right?”
Dru looked up from the map. Ahead, the tunnel split. Yellow numbers were stenciled on the walls of each tunnel, but she couldn’t read them at the speed they were going. She had only seconds to decide.
“Dru?”
She found the intersection on the map. “Right, right! Go right!”
Greyson nudged the wheel, and they shot into the right-hand tunnel. As the yellow stenciled numbers flashed past Dru’s window, she saw her error. “Shoot. I meant left.”
Greyson smacked the steering wheel. “No time to turn around. It’s right behind us.”
As he spoke, the flood of scourge slammed into the intersection behind them, spraying off the corner and filling the tunnel. Hellbringer’s engine picked up speed, and they powered uphill through the curving tunnel.
“Okay, okay,” Dru said, running her fingers across the map, tracing various branches through the miles-long tunnels, trying to find a way back to the entrance. The complex wasn’t designed to be easy to navigate. Most of the tunnels led to isolated branches and ended abruptly. If she accidentally steered them down one of those, they were done for. “At the next branch, go left, and then take another left.”
He did, and a few seconds later, he took the next left.
“We keep passing these closed hatches,” Greyson said as they streaked past a pair of closed blast doors, their striped edges sealed tight. “Looks like steel. Too tough to break through.”
“He must have sealed the doors to channel the scourge out the front door.” Dru followed the arrows Titus had drawn on the schematic in black pen. They all converged on the main entrance, where a single arrow in heavy black marker pointed off the edge of the paper. “If we can’t contain the scourge, it will flow out into the rivers and lakes. Eventually it will hit the oceans, poisoning the water around the world, raising the dead from their graves. Everyone will die.”
“Everyone who drinks the water?”
“Everyone. Everywhere.” She met his gaze. “If the scourge doesn’t get them, a worldwide plague of undead will.”
His jaw flexed, and he nodded once. “So you’re saying our survival is secondary. We have to stop the flood, dead or alive.”
A cold wave of fear washed over her. He was right.
Just ahead of them, the right side of the tunnel wall fractured and burst apart. Black scourge gushed through, blasting boulder-sized chunks of stone into the tunnel. Trapping them.
Instantly, Greyson yanked the gearshift and swung the wheel.
Hellbringer’s engine howled in protest, and the left wheels lurched up onto the wall.
Dru’s stomach dropped as they tilted nearly sideways. With a crunch of steel and a spray of sparks, they scraped past the rocks.
She had an up close view of the tunnel floor as the scourge flooded over it. The black wave slammed against the broken rocks inches from her window.
They hit the floor on the far side, skidding at a nauseating angle into the wall. Hellbringer’s nose clipped the rough stone, jolting Dru and sending her rock-filled tool bag careening against her ankles. She bounced off Greyson’s outstretched arm as he held her against the seat.
He released her and straightened Hellbringer out. They shot away down the tunnel. He nailed the gas, and the gauges on the dashboard swung into the red.
Greyson said, “We’ve got to get—” But the rest of his words were drowned out by a chest-thudding rumble as the tunnel started to collapse behind them.
Rattled, Dru fought the urge to look back. Her fingers shook on the map. Swallowing down her fear, she forced herself to focus. “It’s a straight shot from here until we pass through a bunch of stone columns.”
Dru paused as her finger traced past Titus’s library. Unless he had sealed that door too, all of those artifacts would be destroyed by the scourge. All of the Harbingers’ research. All of the magical books, including the Wicked Scriptures. All of it, lost in the thundering flood of black oil that filled the tunnel behind them.
And where was the apocalypse scroll? Was it in his library? Could they risk turning around to look for it?
No, she decided. They had to keep going. All the way to the main entrance. Looking at it now on the map, she spotted a pair of penciled-in symbols she had missed before. The first resembled football uprights turned upside down. The second was a circle with a diagonal line drawn through it.
She recognized the sorcio signs from
the Harbingers’ mansion in the desert.
“Sekura koridoro,” she translated out loud. “Secure passageway. Holy Shatner. It’s a portal to the netherworld.” She stabbed her finger down on the map. “No matter what, we have to get to the main entrance before the scourge does.”
“Can do.” Greyson’s red eyes ticked up to the rearview mirror. “For now, we’re gaining on it.”
She looked back. At this speed, Hellbringer was outracing the flood. “We’re going to need at least a minute head start for me to open the portal.”
Gripping the wheel, he glanced over at her, a wordless question on his face.
She pulled the chunky green vivianite crystal out of the tool bag. “The moment we get out of the main entrance, stop the car. I’m going to open the portal and suck that bad mojo behind us right into the netherworld. All of it.”
“Will that work?”
She nodded. “Scourge comes from the netherworld, originally. We can send it back there. The netherworld is a wasteland that devours everything. Sorcerers have used it as their dumping ground for millennia. If we’re going to get rid of this scourge, that’s where it needs to go.” She didn’t add that this was also the only plan she had. “Just get us to the entrance. No matter what happens. I mean it.”
Greyson nodded grimly.
Hellbringer’s roaring engine dropped a notch as the tunnel curved tightly uphill. Ahead, the way was strangely lit by the hot golden glow of firelight.
The tunnel opened into a vast chamber supported by chiseled stone columns. Dru recognized it as the place where she’d found the spray-painted symbols.
But instead of a dark and moldy maze, the chamber was now filled with a horde of undead creatures. And they were on fire.
Greyson slowed the car as they approached the flaming mob. Dozens of burning creatures, like skeletal bonfires, staggered blindly into each other or collided with the stone columns and collapsed into piles of smoking bones.
As Dru watched, oddly fascinated, a large metal drum tumbled end over end through the air. The drum sailed in a long arc overhead until it smashed against a stone column at the edge of the firelight. Bending in half on impact, it rained a spray of liquid down on the stumbling horde below.
In a blinding rush, greedy flames leaped from one creature to the next, setting them ablaze. They raised skeletal arms in confusion. Oily yellow flames raced up their web wrapping, reducing them to glowing cinders.
“No way around the fire,” Greyson muttered. “We’ll have to go straight through, fast as we can.”
Dru spotted movement in the middle of the burning horde. “Hold on.” To get a better view, she quickly cranked down her window, undid her seat belt, and pulled herself halfway out of the car. She squinted through the smoke.
Something moved quickly among the undead. A person. Made out of metal.
Rane.
Surrounded by the burning mob of undead, Rane swung some kind of huge club, smashing creatures left and right. But for each one she struck down, more crowded to take its place. No matter how many creatures she destroyed, she couldn’t fight them all. There were too many.
Dru ducked back into the car. “It’s Rane! We have to get her! Go!”
Hellbringer leaped forward. “Brace yourself,” Greyson said.
As they raced toward the burning crowd, Dru started to put on her seat belt, but stopped. Maybe she shouldn’t buckle into the seat if they were going to pick up Rane at high speed. Hellbringer only had two doors. And her window was still open. Before she could decide what to do, they hit the flames.
Hellbringer’s long nose plowed through the blazing crowd, scattering flaming bones in all directions. The tires thudded and bumped as they drove over creatures and bashed the rest aside. In moments, they passed through the flames and reached the hollow center of the horde.
“Rane!” Coughing on the smoke-filled air, Dru got out before the car had completely shrieked to a halt. “Come on!”
Struck speechless, Rane stood openmouthed, still as a statue, shimmering like steel in the firelight. The tip of her long club drooped until it hit the floor at her feet with an iron clang.
Salem appeared from behind her, his face smudged with soot, cradling one arm as if wounded. For the first time ever, he actually looked relieved to see Dru. “Our ride is here,” he said to Rane, as if he had somehow planned this all along.
Rane’s disbelieving stare roamed the length of Hellbringer until it came to rest on Greyson sitting in the driver’s seat. “No . . . way.”
“Way,” Dru said. She grabbed Salem by his good arm. “Into the back seat, big shot.”
The hissing horde pressed closer around them. Streamers of web flashed past them, then sizzled as they caught fire. Rane shook herself and swung the club left and right, bashing creatures to pieces.
Dru wedged herself into the back seat beside Salem.
Rane climbed into the front, making Hellbringer’s springs groan in protest. She slammed the door just as the burning creatures reached the car. The engine roared, and the sudden acceleration shoved them back into their seats.
Tires howling, Hellbringer plowed through the other side of the burning crowd and broke through into the dark tunnel beyond. One creature, missing everything below its rib cage, clambered up the length of the hood to press its flaming skull against the windshield.
One swipe of the chrome windshield wipers knocked it off. It bounced off the side mirror before spinning away behind them, leaving burning streaks in Dru’s vision.
“Hurry. The flood of scourge can’t be far behind us.” Dru turned to look Salem over. “Are you okay? Are you bleeding?”
“He lost his powers,” Rane said in a pouty stage whisper, reaching back to pat Salem’s knee with one metal hand. “Poor little guy. Had too much to drink.”
“So lovely we can all share this moment.” Salem scowled. “But don’t worry about me. Worry about them.” He nodded his chin toward the windshield.
“Hang on!” Greyson said. Hellbringer’s engine raced.
34
HOW THE GODS KILL
A pack of round yellow headlights stared back at Dru from the tunnel ahead. Motorcycles, at least twenty of them, each one ridden by a web-shrouded creature. They filled the width of the tunnel, cutting off all escape as they hurtled straight toward Hellbringer.
For some reason, Dru expected Hellbringer to stop. But either Greyson or the car itself hit the gas, charging forward.
“Brace yourself!” Greyson gripped the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
Dru planted her hands against the back of Rane’s passenger seat, hoping her metal body would protect her. “Roll up the window!” Dru said. But Rane’s four-foot length of iron rail jutted out through the open window, and she didn’t let go of it.
At the last second, the motorcycle gang split and swerved around them, but not all of the riders were quick enough. One fell beneath the car’s pointed nose, and Hellbringer bumped over it as if it were nothing more than a railroad crossing. The last bike rode up the long nose and hit the windshield. White spiderweb cracks fractured the glass.
A crash resounded through the car’s roof as the motorcycle tumbled overhead and flew off the back of the car, scattering across the tunnel floor behind them in pieces.
The rest of the undead gang quickly regrouped and turned around to chase after them. In seconds, the motorcycles would catch up to Hellbringer.
Dru leaned up between the seats. “Can you outrun them?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Salem muttered. “They’re too fast.”
“We need to hit a straightaway,” Greyson said as the cracks popped and vanished from the windshield. “In the curves, I can try and mash them against the wall. Hellbringer will heal. But if we crash, that’s bad news for the rest of us. There’s no way to fight them off.”
As he steered them around the next curve, Rane gave him a look as if he’d made the dumbest statement in the world. “Dude, why do
you think I brought this little flyswatter along?” She hefted the iron rail.
Greyson’s red eyes looked up in the rearview mirror. “I can try to hug my wall. Give you some room to fight.” He glanced at Rane. “Think you can hold them off until we get out of this tunnel?”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“Then you’re on.” Greyson steered Hellbringer inches from the left wall, preventing the undead from coming up on the driver’s side.
Rane pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the passenger door, facing backward, hanging onto the roof with one hand.
“Careful!” Dru yelled as the first motorcycle charged up beside them.
The rider raised one black-clawed hand. Webbing swirled into existence in its palm.
Rane swung the iron club like a tennis racket, knocking the skeletal rider cleanly off the back of the seat.
For a moment, the empty motorcycle popped a wheelie, tatters of webs flapping in the wind as its front wheel lifted up and over. Then it toppled, crumpling into twisted wreckage as it shed speed and fell behind them.
The other riders swerved around the wreck, pale headlights burning in the darkness of the tunnel. Then they surged forward to fill the gap.
Salem leaned across Dru to yell at Rane. “Get back inside! It’s too dangerous!”
Rane ignored him.
The lead undead creature passed Hellbringer’s tail wing and raised one clawed hand. It shot out a stream of webbing that smacked into the iron club and nearly wrenched it from Rane’s hand. She held on tighter.
“Let it go!” Salem called.
“Screw that!” Rane yelled back. Hooking her metal feet inside the edge of the window, she whipped the iron club around in a circle. The motorcycle, pulled taut by the web, veered and swung into the wall like a tetherball on a string. It disintegrated into pieces, sending web-wrapped chunks of flaming wreckage flying in all directions. The explosion thinned the pack by two more motorcycles.
Grinning furiously, Rane let out a primal yell. “Yeah!”
The rest of the motorcycles squeezed close together, firing a volley of shimmering webs that smacked into Rane’s arm, shoulder, and chest. They started to pull her out of the car.
A Kiss Before Doomsday Page 28