The Road to Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Preternatural Affairs Book 9)

by SM Reine

  There was a time I could have run all the way to Canada with Fritz in my arms. Two hundred pounds of kopis wasn’t much when I took strength-augmenting poultices. But the world was different these days. I was different.

  Picking up Fritz felt like setting gravity to quadruple its usual strength. I couldn’t get far with him, but I had to try. I let gravity and momentum carry us to the bottom of the street.

  He kicked his way free of my grasp at the bottom of the hill. “The damned prosthesis,” Fritz said. “Had to switch to a cheap one—the good one broke. And now this.” The foot was at a wrong angle. It wasn’t going to be any good for supporting him.

  I pulled his arm over my shoulders. “Over that way.”

  We got to the beach without encountering any demons. It was normal for lesser creatures to run in the face of big bads like Proserpine. Master demons didn’t discriminate in absorbing their surroundings, so everything else would scatter like cockroaches.

  Just our luck. The tiny demons were as afraid of her as we were.

  Too bad Proserpine was only out to get us.

  I dragged Fritz under a pier. The gray water had been sucked away by low tide, leaving a long sheet of kelp-dotted sand for us to collapse upon.

  He dropped with his back against a post, and I fell to my knees to keep him from hitting too hard. Water slopped up my pants legs.

  “That could have gone better,” I said, glancing over my shoulder toward the city. I couldn’t see much past the street. There was indistinct movement in the shadows. Proserpine might have been sending out wisps to search while she reformed. Wouldn’t take them long to find us on the shore.

  “Yes, it could have, if you’d allowed me to fight. You shouldn’t have jumped into her like that!” Fritz said.

  “I had to! It was the whole point!” I unfurled my left fist between us. The blisters stretched and popped as I moved my hand, so it was hard to stretch out my fingers. They formed a cage around a Purple Heart, its ribbon decayed until only a couple threads remained.

  I let the medal fall into his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Fritz’s jaw dropped. “You are…”

  “Sorry,” I said again. “I fucked up everything. I lied to you. I only moved into your house to spy on you. I was never a good friend or employee. I fucked your wife, I fucked your cases, and I fucked up your fucking soul.”

  Fritz was still staring. At me, at the Purple Heart.

  “Been waiting to say those words a while, but I didn’t wanna say it until I could prove it,” I said. “Did you know that nightmares can’t digest metals? They transport weapons that way sometimes. I found a book about it. So anyway, I spent this time—”

  My head slammed into the sand. Fritz had punched me hard enough to send me flying.

  I tasted blood. Rolling over, I felt my lip. It was split.

  For a moment, I laid in the sand the way the incubus in my vision had. If Fritz had tried to beat me to death, I’d probably have let him.

  But he said, “Apology accepted.” Fritz pulled me into a standing position. His hands clamped down on my shoulders. He was squeezing them, kind of, like there was this frenetic physical energy trying to somehow escape him. “Proserpine is moments away, Cèsar, so I must return to Belle and Suze or risk losing them to her. You have to come with us on the Friederling X. Come with us.” The tendons in his jaw rippled. “Come with me, Cèsar. Please.”

  I’d grabbed his elbows at some point, probably in an effort to keep standing up. I was holding him as hard as he was holding me. We were gonna be covered in a bunch of finger-sized bruises. “You don’t get to order me around anymore. Apocalypse made us equals.”

  “We have never been equals,” Fritz said.

  “It’s true, you are like this weird ermine-human crossbreed,” I said. “Ermine-human-ninja-whatever. Enormous mutant. Mutants are low on the—”

  Fritz shoved his fist between us, and I jerked instinctively to dodge a punch he wasn’t swinging. His hand was so close, my eyes struggled to focus on what he was holding.

  The Purple Heart.

  “I never deserved you,” Fritz said. “I know why you don’t want to come. I agree. You shouldn’t have to spend another day with me. I’m telling—asking—you to do it anyway.”

  I’d never seen him like this.

  Fritz was reserved. He was snarky, sometimes even snide. He was cold and strong and impenetrable.

  It had always surprised me when he laughed his true laugh—which was one dorky goddamn laugh—because it reminded me of how much was going on in his head that I didn’t know anything about. I had no filter when I talked. Fritz was nothing but filter. A sploof so dense that even Pops wouldn’t have known I was smoking in my room again.

  Now the filter was falling away as his hands flexed on my shoulders, pushing me away, yet somehow keeping me at arm’s reach.

  My heels dug into the sand. Couldn’t help it—it was an instinct. So many times I’d grappled with this guy at the gym. Always trying to keep from getting thrown down. Struggling to get the higher ground against a preternaturally strong kopis.

  “No,” I said. Just one syllable, loud and clear. I pushed him.

  Fritz released me. Stepped back.

  Normally this would have been time for his long, calculating looks. The ones that said he’d already figured out my next six moves and knew how to counter them. Instead, he was looking at me in despair.

  “There’s nothing I can say.” Fritz shoved the Purple Heart back into his pocket. The yacht had appeared on the horizon, bobbing on the waves, visible as only a dot of light. “If you change your mind—”

  “I’m not going to change my mind. And it’s not about you, Fritz. I don’t blame you for anything, okay?”

  “Then why?” he asked, voice ragged.

  I shook my head. Getting back on that boat to face Isobel and Suzy, having to live with the shit I’d done to all of them… My apology to Fritz couldn’t make up for any of that. For fuck’s sake, I’d broken the Focus that could have gotten them through apocalypse.

  I’d rather die alone than watch death take the three of them.

  Fritz kicked off his broken prosthesis as he waded into the water. “If you’re not going to come, then I’m going to find you next year.”

  “There’s not going to be a next year,” I said.

  “There will.” He sounded so convinced that I almost believed him. “And I’m going to find you. We will revitalize the bond next year, and the year after, and every year to come until I’m gone. I will find you.” By the time he finished speaking, he had already cast his gaze onto the oncoming waves.

  To be honest, I was grateful not to deal with the weight of his eyes anymore.

  But it kinda sucked to watch him dive into the waves—a bronzed figure in clean white against a smoke-clutched city—and realize that I’d probably lost my chance to see his face one more time.

  I climbed up on the boardwalk to watch the Friederling X. It was near enough that I saw when Fritz’s sodden form climbed up its rear, tumbling onto the deck.

  The wind smelled like decay.

  Proserpine was going to catch up, and I was standing here on the dock, watching my friends prepare to leave without me.

  I turned to face the gathering shadow. “You want a Round Two, bitch?” I asked, lifting my fists. “You wanna do this again? I’ll keep going until the goddamn world ends if that’s what it takes!”

  The rotten wind blasted harder, hotter. For a moment, Proserpine’s semi-corporeal face washed past me.

  I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill them.

  The words breezed through me with a hint of pain and fear. Fritz had moved on, leaving our bond stronger than it had ever been, but Proserpine was still powerful enough to do exactly what she threatened.

  She was going to kill me.

  I wouldn’t survive a Round Two.

  Fear crept into me again, just like it had in the penthouse. I sank into dark
ness. It was more treacherous than wet sand, blacker than Proserpine, as inescapable as death itself.

  At the bottom of the pit, there was a yacht. The Friederling X. I found myself standing on its deck awash in the crimson haze of nightmare thrall, surrounded by everyone I loved the most. Fritz. Isobel. Suzy. The vision was too brief to fill me with joy. Proserpine’s mouth was closing over the ship, flooding me with the idea of all four of us dying together. A horror from the darkest nightmares.

  Except it didn’t scare me.

  In the moment before Proserpine’s fangs shut on the Friederling X, I saw the people around me, and I was just happy to be there.

  And then it occurred to me that I didn’t have to die alone.

  Crazy idea, right?

  But here I was, struggling to figure out a way to kill a nightmare more powerful than any demon I’d ever encountered, and…I didn’t have to.

  I’d already gotten the Purple Heart. I’d apologized, gotten punched in the face. Things were as fine with Fritz as they could be.

  Didn’t Suzy and Isobel deserve chances to punch me in the face too?

  “I don’t have to die alone,” I said.

  The jaw froze. The Friederling X frayed, swept away into the fringes of the nightmare, and I stood alone within Proserpine’s thrall.

  What’s that you say? Proserpine asked.

  So I repeated myself. “I don’t have to die alone!”

  Don’t be so optimistic, Proserpine hissed. I only need a few more minutes before I’ll be picking my teeth with your bones.

  “Catch me if you can,” I said.

  Then I ran, breaking free of the black mist.

  Cold slithered over my back, between my shoulder blades, around my ankles. The edges of my vision were fading into darkness.

  But there was no fear. It lifted from me with every step, melting before it could sink into my brain. I shouldn’t have been able to see the beach or the boardwalk at this point, yet it all looked so vivid to me, untouched by nightmare thrall. Proserpine may as well have not existed.

  I raced to the end of the pier and launched off, hands joined above my head.

  There was a weightless moment where fear slowed time to a crawl. I was plummeting face-first toward the choppy waters far below.

  Then I was immersed.

  I’d thought about jumping into the bay more than once, and now that I’d done it, I realized what a bad idea it was. My clothes were dragging me down. It was cold. Salt burned my shadow burns. I spiraled my arms, kicked my feet, didn’t seem to make progress.

  My head burst out of the waves, and then I was sucked under again, carried out on the tide.

  Up and down meant nothing.

  It was infinitely dark and cold in the ocean. My lungs ached.

  A hand shot into my view.

  The instant I grabbed it, I knew it was him. I didn’t need validation from the effortless strength that lifted me onto the boat, or the familiar shape of the shoulders that I grabbed for balance.

  I was soaking wet, plastered with ash and ichor and blood, and Fritz still clutched at me until there wasn’t any air between us.

  “I changed my mind,” I gasped.

  He laughed, pressing his wet forehead against mine, and he said, “I assumed you would.”

  A blanket fell over my shoulders. The tiny, bony hand smacking me on the back had to be Suzy’s. She was the only person in the world who knew how to hit the most painful parts of any given body.

  I coughed half the ocean out of my lungs onto the deck.

  “I hate you,” Isobel said, shoving Fritz away from me. “You left me so scared! I thought you didn’t remember me!”

  I smiled weakly. “Well, Izzy—”

  There was no chance to get out anything other than that. She slanted her mouth against mine, kissing me like she used to. Like she was going to crawl into me. She tasted like tortilla chips and grave dirt, and I loved it.

  “This is cute and all, but we still have a problem,” Suzy said. She was at the controls of the ship, battered by wind as she tried to turn us away from San Francisco.

  The problem was currently a towering sheet of terror that grew larger by the heartbeat. Proserpine was growing.

  “What’s she even feeding off of?” I asked, holding Izzy by the waist. It was the only thing keeping me on my feet. “There can’t be many humans left to fuel her.”

  “I believe it’s old-fashioned female bitterness,” Fritz said. Suzy punched him in the bicep. He flinched back.

  “Take the controls, d-bag,” she said. “I’ve got a fix for this.”

  Fritz stepped around her to take the wheel, keeping his leg-stump pressed against the bulkhead for balance. Suzy leaped down the stairs to go below deck.

  “Bring another of my legs up with you!” he called after her.

  “Get your own fucking leg!” she called back.

  “This boat must be a laugh a minute with the two of them on it,” I said to Isobel.

  “They’ve been getting along great,” she said, guiding me to sit on the bench. “I think they’re friends now. Sometimes I even catch Fritz laughing with her. That really dorky laugh.”

  “You’ve noticed how dorky his laugh is too?”

  “Oh my God, yes,” Isobel said. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Proserpine’s too-huge face was forming over San Francisco now. The chill of fear washed over the ocean, and I forgot to say something else snarky about Fritz. Isobel had gone pale. She felt it too.

  “I should build wards,” I said without getting up from the bench. Even if they had spell supplies, I didn’t have any strength left.

  “Hang tight!” Suzy said. “I’m just looking for the bomb!”

  “The Apple’s bomb,” Isobel explained.

  I nearly choked on my own tongue. “What’s she doing with it?”

  “I’ve been tinkering with it,” Suzy called from below deck. “I saw how my mom had been modifying it to kill only the angel, so I figured out how to turn it the other way, kinda—make it stronger and less discriminating.”

  “She assures me less discriminating doesn’t mean it’ll kill us,” Isobel said.

  Suzy emerged from below decks with the bomb. It still looked pretty much like a Fabergé egg. A glimpse of it made my nose itch like crazy. “Bomb, anyone?” Suzy asked, lifting it up. “It needs a strong witch to wield it. Like someone who has a kopis?”

  “You can’t be hinting that I’m competent, much less strong,” I said.

  Suzy looked me in the eye. “Nope.” Her mouth twitched into a smile. “Come on, you big oaf. Save our lives.”

  Suddenly I was strong enough to stand up again. I took the bomb from her. Fritz put his hand on it and his other arm locked around my waist. Isobel’s fingers crept through his so I had two hands on my back, and a connection to Suzy through the bomb.

  All linked. All safe.

  I lifted my hand to point at the encroaching shadows, and the bomb surged with blossoming light. The strength didn’t come from me alone. I was interlinked with my companions—four people in one.

  “Now,” Fritz said.

  And I threw it.

  A pair of Proserpine’s hands shot from the clouds to grab the egg, careful as though it were a grenade. She didn’t immediately throw it back. She didn’t seem to know what it was, and her many thousands of fingers were stroking over it, turning it around.

  Then she realized.

  The endless mouth opened to say, “Oh, shit.”

  Suzy’s bomb detonated like fireworks, and Proserpine blew up along with it in a thousand brilliant blossoms of light.

  It blazed through San Francisco, burning away the fog, tearing the clouds asunder. The distant chorus of screaming demon voices was sweet.

  Proserpine’s face splattered in the biggest explosion of them all.

  Fear washed over me—and past me, without making contact, like she was oil and I was water. Proserpine’s death throes didn’t touch me. They didn’t touch an
y of us.

  Isobel was cuddled up against Fritz’s arm, gazing up at the play of light with wonder. “Wow,” she said. Proserpine’s death reflected on her face and in her irises. She was haloed in death, as a necrocognitive was meant to be, and she was beautiful in it. “She won’t be coming back from that.”

  “Damn right she won’t. I made that bomb. Nobody’s coming back from it.” Suzy’s fingers slid through mine, and she clutched my hand hard. I was surprised. I’d have figured she’d be pissed at me for the rest of our lives, however long that lasted.

  I held her hand tight, grinning down at her. “You and May did good stuff.”

  “I know,” she said. Her kiss was brief, but forgiving.

  Proserpine’s death ignited a chain reaction. The clouds were burning farther out, filling the sky with blazing phosphorous. It snowed onto the streets.

  “What are those little pops of light?” I asked. The phosphor kept blooming when it got near the ground.

  “I believe it’s hitting wisps and brutes and exploding them, too,” Fritz said.

  “Like popcorn,” Suzy said cheerfully.

  It was better than the Fourth of July.

  A hand bumped mine—on the opposite side from Suzy’s—and I didn’t have to look down to know it was Fritz. I just grabbed him and held on, linking us in a totally different kind of chain reaction. All four of us together at the end of the world, smiling through our exhaustion at one last victory.

  Fritz shook beside me. It took me a minute to realize he was laughing.

  “Did you have a breakdown?” I asked.

  “I just realized that the Friederlings officially have nothing left,” he said. “No mines, no house, not even the would-be infernal heir. I’ve killed Proserpine. I’m disinherited and there’s nobody left to accept the magic. I have…nothing.” He laughed harder, and the acid blaze of the nighttime sky reflected on his dampened cheeks.

  Suzy shrugged like losing all that didn’t matter. “We’ve got the yacht.”

  “Yes,” Fritz said. “Yes we do.”

  The last of the moisture in the air, and the last of the demons, burned away after some hours, and San Francisco exited artificial daytime to return to endless night. And we bobbed along on the ocean, heading nowhere in particular. We might end up in New Zealand. Japan. Somewhere. God only knew.