Devil's Hand

by M. E. Patterson

  Celia turned from the window to survey the rest of the room and then saw something else in the room with her. In the long, deep shadows cast by the dying light from outside, there lurked a form. A human’s shape. A child’s shape.

  “W–Who’s there?” Celia stuttered, whispering, still shivering from the terrors of the dream world.

  Celia reached back and threw the drapes open further, that she might get a better look at her companion. The white light fell upon it, causing no reaction. The child stepped forward, a little boy, head bowed, arms hanging limp at his sides, his lips and eyes crudely sutured shut.

  “Ohmigod!” Celia gasped. She wanted to rush toward him, but some part of her warned her back, some deep part that she did not favor, some voice that still lingered in the back of her mind, a voice she wanted desperately to forget.

  The child took another step, and then he began to shiver and his legs gave out and he collapsed. His body went into seizure and the boy flopped and writhed like a fish on land. And then the sutures began to pop loose. With guttural screams from the boy’s now-unburdened lips, the sutures on his eyes ripped free, and Celia saw that his eyeballs had been removed, leaving behind only black, empty holes. From those holes, a shape poured forth.

  It was a ghostly shape, as black as the shadows themselves. When looking at it directly, the thing seemed to nearly vanish, but she found it was still visible at the corners of her periphery. She could feel its presence, could somehow taste its thoughts and intentions, and she began to understand. It was a thing that brought nightmares, a creature that served entirely to pollute dreams. And it was Zamagiel’s siphon, made solely to drain the power from her.

  Zamagiel had kidnapped those children, she thought. He was looking for one who could contain this thing. The notion horrified her. One of the ruined children had been a friend at her school. Zamagiel had done this to get his power back. From Celia. All of this–the kidnappings, the attacks in the tunnel, everything–everything to get at her.

  Celia realized then that the draining sensation she had felt in the dream world was the Nightmare Bringer’s gift to his new master, a transfer of ancient power that had given Zamagiel the ability to raise the blizzard that held the city in its grip. The Nightmare Bringer had taken some from her the night before, when she’d awoken from a terrible dream only to find herself in the midst of anaphylactic shock.

  She felt a rage rising inside her, and the powerful magic of her ancestry rose with it. Her escape from the dream world had left her with much power still. More than enough, she decided.

  She scrambled to her feet and glanced around the room, searching again for the ever-shifting Bringer. Her fingertips tingled with an icy sensation.

  “It’s time for this city to wake up,” she hissed, drawing the Bringer’s attention.

  She could see it moving toward her, leaping from shadow to shadow as it crossed the expanse of the lounge. She waited.

  It occupied, for a split-second, the shadow of one of the sleeping children, then the shadow of a broken table, then her own shadow. Then, for the first time since she had awoken, it came to life in its own form, appearing directly in front of her eyes. It was a reptilian thing. Its beady shadow-eyes locked with hers. It darted forward, seeking to bury itself in her sight and claw its way into her mind. But Celia was ready and had no intention of going back into the monster’s foul nightmares.

  She reached out and grabbed it.

  As her shivering hands plowed into the shadow-stuff that formed the Bringer’s flesh, she remembered the last magic The Book had tried to teach her. It was the thing that had caused her revolt, the spell that had forced her to throw the foul manuscript away in terror and disgust. It was the spell that The Book had wanted her to use on the fallen rapists, but she had refused. She hesitated to use the magic even now, though she knew the Bringer could not be killed by normal means.

  It was a secret so foul that only the mad angel Raziel had been given it and only Raziel had written it down and Celia had learned its entire history in that moment in the street before the horrible men and their victim. It was an incantation learned by none who had possessed the tome in pre-history–not Noah, not Solomon. Only Celia had been entrusted with this secret, and its horrifying nature made her head swim. For a moment, she hesitated, terrified to use it.

  The Bringer of Nightmares twisted and writhed in her grasp and she staggered backwards, still holding it, knowing that it would soon overpower her. Tendrils leapt out from its form and wormed their way into her eyes and mouth and ears and she knew she would soon be like that boy, a tool of power to use against a hapless world.

  “No,” she said out loud, her voice quiet with sudden calm.

  Celia gritted her teeth against the pain sure to come, and pushed down her fear into a pit in her stomach, and then uttered but a single word in a language long forgotten by man.

  The Bringer of Nightmares stopped its forward motion and shuddered violently. The tendrils of black that had already begun to crawl into the corners of Celia’s eyes came thrashing out. She held the black shade aloft as it struggled and squirmed to escape her grip.

  “You like nightmares?” she said, her voice a gritty growl. “Then live in mine.”

  She pulled her hand back fast and jammed her palm against her chest. With a quiet hiss, the spell birthed itself upon reality, tore a miniscule hole in the fabric of the world, and sucked the creature deep into Celia’s soul. The Bringer of Nightmares disappeared.

  Celia’s eyes went wide, her fingers spasmed with shock and pain, and she was thrown backwards by an invisible force. She landed hard on her butt on the floor of the study. Her back and head slammed against floor-to-ceiling window, making the glass ring with the impact.

  Inside, Celia could feel the creature clawing at the confines of her soul, at its new, immaterial prison. She tried to stand, but the pain forced her to drop to her knees. She knew that she had made a dangerous choice. The Bringer was not a thing of weakness, and only the strongest will could hold it at bay. She knew that it would be an unending struggle for her, even far past her death.

  Shaking with concentration, she finally picked herself up, stood straight, and faced the window. With every passing second, the pain inside her dulled, as if the soul-caged creature had begun to wither in its attempts to escape its new cell.

  As she looked out over the snow-encrusted landscape, Celia thought about all the death that lay beyond the window, in the dying city of Las Vegas. She could just make out the sounds of sirens in the far distance. She thought about the police she had slaughtered at the lockup. Suicide entered her mind. Too many people had already died for her sake. Her own death would take the Bringer of Nightmares back into the places of shadow. Only she would have to face it then.

  She reached out her hand and, with a gesture, blew apart the glass in front of her. The new hole screeched with blizzard winds, surrounding her with ice and swirling snow and blowing lightweight Egyptian curios from the bookshelves around her. She looked down and saw light glinting off the smooth black side of the pyramidal hotel. She would fall, smashing over and over as she tumbled down the side until she hit the concrete below, removing her from the mortal world. And she would take the Bringer with her. She tensed and extended her arms against the buffeting winds, and prepared to jump. No one, she thought, can survive a fall like this.

  A bloodcurdling yell cut the freezing air, echoing through the howling storm. The yell had come from the rooftop.

  Trent’s yell.

  She had forgotten about Trent! Her mind cleared instantly of suicidal thoughts. If Trent was still alive, if he was in trouble, she owed him her help. She loved him too much not to.

  28

  TRENT WOKE TO THE SEARING vision of the Luxor’s beam, the brightest light in Nevada, visible, on a clear night, for hundreds of miles outside of Las Vegas. But it was not a clear night tonight, and the beam illuminated only the metal maintenance platform atop the Luxor’s point, the blizzard clouds an
d snow swirling above it, and the limping, corpse-like old man that stood interposing between the beam and Trent.

  He had been tied to a metal pole. That much he gathered quickly. One of several tall lightning rods on the roof of the hotel, he surmised. He glanced up at the swirling, churning storm clouds, and saw electrical arcs dancing in the black, highlighting the snow and wind with random flashes of white. He wondered how long he had before the next bolt struck the pole to which he was bound.

  “I don’t suppose you have long, Mister Hawkins,” said the old man before him. “The last bolt struck nearby,” said Salvatore (Zamagiel, Trent corrected himself), “and caused you quite the shock. Your scream was impressive. I’m glad it woke you up.” The old man limped closer and Trent could see the sunken features and dead-white skin that hung, sagging, from his face. “Now, at least, you can witness the cleansing of this place of its filth before you die.”

  Trent tried to shout again in anger, but found he had exhausted any suitable amount of air in his battered lungs. He could feel blood running down his torso, falling in frozen droplets to the ground below. His feet dangled pitifully.

  The fallen angel walked closer to Trent and waved off the four nearby angelic guards. “You have caused me a great deal of pain today. A great amount of difficulty.” Zamagiel sneered, an expression that looked to Trent more like a puppet moving the lips of a corpse than like an actual expression on a living face. “You quite nearly cost me my victory, my ticket back into Heaven.”

  “You’ll never get into Heaven,” Trent growled, his voice hoarse and broken. “You’re a monster, Zamagiel.”

  The fallen angel winced at the mention of his true name. “To the contrary,” he said, forcing an irritated smile. “I believe that God will reward me greatly for returning his Garden to its prior state.” He took a few steps back and gestured with open arms to the blizzard howling around them. “This is ten thousand years of waiting, Mister Hawkins!” he shouted. “This is the Flood reborn in snow and ice! This is the rectification of my sins against the Almighty!”

  “You’re insane,” Trent said, and then spit out a mouthful of blood that had collected under his tongue. “You’re a murderer, not a saint.”

  The old man’s broken, corpse-like body whirled back around to face him. He advanced on Trent, his motion a leg-dragging limp punctuated by a near-collapse with every footstep. The snow and ice swirled around him, avoiding his dead, rotting flesh as he moved.

  “You’re the murderer,” he hissed. He gestured with broken, bloodstained fingers at his own chest. “You destroyed him, Trent. Look upon this tattered old wreck, this man. He was a father, a husband once, like you.” He looked at Trent and sneered. “You destroyed him. He is dead now, gone forever, his soul trapped. And I am left to shamble about, an angel in a corpse.” He paced for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “And yet,” he said, grinning, “I can make you pay for your transgressions, even ruined as I am.”

  He stepped closer, wrapped his aged fingers around Trent’s neck and slammed his head against the post with a clang. “Do you know how hard it is to enlist a favor from the Prince of Shades? He has given me two!” He spit out the last word. “He nearly refused me this second chance because of you!” He slammed Trent’s head against the post another time for good measure. Trent’s chin dropped and his head lolled from side to side, blood drooling from between his lips.

  “And now, you dare approach me directly? You dare believe that you–a mortal–can defeat an angel at the height of its power?” Salvatore laughed into the screaming wind. “Even inside a corpse, I am an angel, Trent, and you are but a lucky mortal, nothing more!”

  Trent lifted his head a few inches. It caused immense pain to match the grigorim’s gaze, but he did it anyway. His voice came out quiet and ragged. “You’re a fallen angel, Zamagiel,” he said, using the creature’s true name again, eliciting another wince of irritation from the old man’s face. “You won’t win. They’ll take you out, even if I can’t. Your storm will start the War and the demons will come down on you with all the fires of Hell.”

  Zamagiel rolled his eyes. (Salvatore’s eyes, Trent reminded himself.) “They have their ridiculous rules. They cannot stop me. They’re not allowed, and have grown too complacent, too weak. It’s sad, really, that they believed you to be their last hope, a pathetic mortal with some extra luck. But you don’t look lucky to me anymore. Do you feel lucky, Trent, with your body broken and your spirit crushed?”

  “I’ve never felt lucky,” Trent said, his voice carrying an edge of resignation. “I just win sometimes.” Even as he said it, a part of him worried that this would not be one of those times. He glanced up briefly, just in time to see a massive lightning bolt arc between two clouds directly overhead.

  “Well not this time,” Zamagiel said, and chuckled. “I believe that your luck has run out.” He peered at Trent for a moment, his gaze punctuated by a low, rumbling thunderclap. He pulled the silvery angel’s dagger from inside his coat and contemplated it for a moment. “What are you, exactly, that you wield the strength to best a cherubim?” he asked. “Baraqel’s child? The Luckbringer? I thought he was quite older than you.”

  Trent did not answer. He gathered up another mouthful of blood and spit it in Zamagiel’s withered face.

  The fallen angel let out a guttural grunt of displeasure. “Filthy simian,” he said. “Whether you belong to one of my siblings or not, it hardly matters. You will die tonight, along with all of this ridiculous City of Sin.” He pulled back from Trent and stepped away. Two of the four blond angels moved closer to guard Trent, rifles held aloft.

  With his back turned now, Zamagiel said, “Are you cold, Mister Hawkins?”

  Trent’s legs felt like distant stumps, disconnected from his understanding of pain. He could only barely feel them dangling below him. As he hung there, back against the frozen metal pole, with blizzard tendrils dancing over his icy skin, he thought of death and then of Susan. How many times had she watched him fall? How many times had she picked him back up? Was this how he would go out? A wave of anger rose in his gut and he struggled against the metal cord that tied his wrists above him to the pole. His legs and back banged painfully as he writhed and yelled, his voice cracking with pain.

  Zamagiel still did not turn. His attention seemed focused on the dying city below. “No amount of luck will help you now,” he said, almost absently. “You should be content with watching the Lord’s work be done.”

  “Fuck you!” he roared in reply.

  Zamagiel spun around, a malicious grin on his face as he gazed upon his trapped victim. Another thunderclap cracked the air, causing the metal platform to ring from the boom. Below, in the Luxor parking garage, a chorus of car alarms could be heard faintly, competing with the howling blizzard winds.

  And that’s when Trent realized that the thunderclap had not come from the storm. It had been something else, heralding a nightmare far worse than a bolt of lightning. Behind Zamagiel, in the long shadow cast by the Luxor beam upon one of the other lightning poles, Trent could see a dark shape rising. The Render, swirling and forming, its black legs pulling gingerly from the narrow line and touching down upon the dark platform. Trent’s heart stopped with fear. He had not managed to kill it. The thing had survived, and had come back for him, and now he was an easy prey.

  “Zamagiel,” he said, quietly, “you’ve gotta let me down.”

  The fallen angel laughed, even as two of the angelic guards near Trent seemed to suddenly notice the new intruder. “And why would I do that?”

  “Look behind you,” Trent hissed.

  Zamagiel seemed uninterested in the ruse at first, but then his guards all raised rifles, seemingly aimed at him, and he took the hint and spun on his heels. “No,” he gasped suddenly. “No!”

  The old man took a few dragging steps backwards, almost collapsing in the process. He held his hands out in front of him and a swirl of ice and snow swept down from the sky and slammed into the Render, knoc
king it back and stunning it, just for a moment. “No,” he said again. “He promised me. The Prince promised not to betray me again. What is this?”

  “It’s a Render,” said Trent, louder this time. “I know how to kill it, but you have to let me down.”

  The Render seemed to shake off the icy blast and its spidery legs began moving forward, carefully, one at a time, advancing on Zamagiel and Trent.

  Zamagiel took another few steps backwards, even closer to Trent now, and summoned another blast of wind and snow, knocking the shadow creature back a few feet. He glanced around at the angelic guards, all of whom had their rifles raised, but had not yet fired. “Shoot it, you idiots!” screamed Zamagiel.

  But the angels would not fire. One of them said, quietly, “I’m sorry, grigorim. The Prophecy must–”

  “There is no Prophecy!” bellowed Zamagiel, as he brought another wave of ice to bear against the Render. Trent could see that every use of the magic weakened the old man further and his posture had already begun to slump. “The Prophecy is naught but Ramiel’s lies! Clever stories and misdirection! You have all been fooled!”

  “Let me go!” yelled Trent, adding his own voice to the chaos. “Give me the dagger! Let me kill it!”

  The momentary pause told Trent that something inside Zamagiel had begun to fight. Salvatore, maybe? Was he still inside that corpse, trying to find his own voice? But as quickly as it had gone, the moment went.

  “No!” screamed Zamagiel again, though whether to Trent’s insistence or to the Prince’s betrayal, Trent did not know. The old man raised his arms again and blasted the advancing Render with another burst of snow. He took another step backward, putting the back of his head within a few inches of Trent face.