When Cooper reached Max, he found him kneeling beside Scathach. The lad did not turn as the Agent approached. He seemed oblivious to Cooper’s presence, to the encroaching flames, to everything but the young woman leaning against his chest. Cooper surveyed their surroundings but found no sign of the clones. Their absence puzzled him. Their target was here, back exposed, vulnerable. They must be nearby. A second scan revealed nothing.
The Agent’s eyes fell upon Scathach. The girl’s head was resting on Max’s shoulder. One look at her blank, bloodless face told him she was gone.
There was not much more to say. Scathach’s death was a significant blow for Rowan, the Red Branch, and most importantly for Max McDaniels. There were only two people William Cooper truly loved: his wife and the young man before him. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pain he would feel if he lost Hazel. So many that Max held dear had been taken from him: his parents, his Nick, and now Scathach. How would he react to this?
Cooper’s wary eyes fell on the gae bolga, which lay on the marble floor, its dark blade drinking the firelight rather than reflecting it. Slowly, Max extended a trembling hand over the spear. He made a fist, convulsively clenching and unclenching his fingers as though fighting the urge to seize the awful weapon.
A deep and growing fear welled up in Cooper. It filled his stomach like cold venom, a feeling of imminent danger stronger than anything he’d experienced since he’d encountered the Fomorian many years ago. But this sensation was far worse. And it was building steadily.
“Max,” said Cooper.
No response.
Hazel and Agent Varga came hurrying through the archway. His wife stopped to pluck up Toby from where the unconscious smee lay by the shattered exhibit case. Cradling him in her hand, she caught up to Varga, who had slowed to a walk. Upon seeing Scathach’s lifeless body, Hazel gave a choking cry. She made a beeline for Max, but Cooper intercepted her.
“Wait.”
“William, he needs us!” she gasped.
“Hazel,” he said calmly. “Something’s wrong.”
“Of course something’s wrong. Scathach—”
“Not Scathach. Max.”
Varga had already stopped short. Shading his eyes, the prescient was peering at Max as though he perceived something, some energy field or aura that they could not see. He gave a hoarse cry. “Back away from him!”
Cooper obeyed, pulling Hazel with him as they skirted burning pools and broken glass. Twenty yards. Thirty. From somewhere high above came a harsh, rhythmic clanging that sounded like overheating pipes. Cooper kept his eyes fixed on Max until the clanging intensified.
Twisting around, Cooper looked up, following the sound until he spied an observation balcony nestled beneath the roof beams high above. There stood Max’s clones, leaning over its railing and gazing down on them. The feral one was striking the balcony with a heavy rod so that its din rang out like mock applause. A second look revealed it was not a rod, but the broken shaft of Scathach’s spear.
Meeting Cooper’s gaze, the bigger clone—the one that had snapped his arms like kindling—smiled and leaned far out over the railing. His challenge echoed throughout the museum.
“Atropos a-kultir veytahlyss. Morkün i-tolvatha!”
Cooper knew the chilling phrase: Atropos has cut your life’s thread. Die and be damned!
Varga spun around to locate the speaker. So did Hazel.
Max did not turn, but his fingers closed around the gae bolga.
The big clone laughed. “Are you in mourning, brother? Don’t shed tears for a coward. She fairly begged for her life.”
His head still bowed, Max raised the spear and pointed it at the archway.
Cooper slid sideways, as though pulled by a powerful magnet. So did Hazel. Varga stumbled and spilled onto the floor. An unseen force was sweeping them out of the room. At first, Cooper sought to hold his ground, but it was like struggling against a riptide. Whisked off their feet, the trio was sent sliding and tumbling out of the burning museum. Once they passed beneath the grand archway, they skidded to a stop.
Cooper reached out to Hazel. She was curled up into ball, breathing heavily. One hand still clutched the unconscious smee; the other was pressed to her rounded belly. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I … I think so.”
“Stay here,” said Cooper, helping her to lean against a nearby wall. Behind them, Varga had already pushed to his feet and was hobbling back to see what was happening. Cooper joined him just beneath the marble archway.
Fifty yards away, Max had risen to his feet. He walked slowly in the direction of the clones, leaning heavily upon the gae bolga. His face was downcast, his steps unsteady.
“Is he injured?” Cooper whispered.
“I don’t know,” said Varga. “I can barely see his flesh. His aura …”
He trailed off in bewildered silence. The clones also sensed something was amiss. The huge assassin had ceased his jeering. The wild one peered over the rail like a skeletal gargoyle, his mouth full of jagged teeth. Even at this distance, Cooper could see that Max was shaking violently. When he lifted his head, Varga drew a sharp breath. Cooper merely stared.
Max’s eyes were as black as the blade he carried. An expression of cold, contained anger was giving way to one of seething, terrifying rage. Cooper wanted to flee and yet he couldn’t move or look away. He was rooted to the spot, an unwilling and powerless witness as the boy craned his neck toward Scathach’s killers.
When Max screamed, the exhibit cases shattered. Cooper and Varga were blown back as though a bomb had detonated. Cooper struck the wall in the outside corridor, cracking the marble and falling straight down by his astonished wife.
He lay in a crumpled heap, dimly conscious of a high-pitched buzzing. Someone rolled him gently onto his back. It was Hazel, her anxious face blurry and doubled. She was speaking to him, but her voice was distorted, muffled. When he tried to sit up, his ribs howled in protest. Shifting position, he took Hazel’s hand and she pulled him upright.
Standing helped. Varga sat several feet away, his nose shattered. He snapped his fingers by each ear to test if they were working. When he noticed the Coopers, he blinked dazedly and they helped him to his feet. The three turned to look at the museum.
A blinding radiance shone through the archway, so dazzling they could barely look at it. Averting his eyes, Cooper took Hazel’s hand and stepped through the archway. Varga followed, his cane scraping on the floor. There was no discussion or debate whether they should go within. Some external force or will was drawing them onward.
The three inched forward, bent and blinded. The air was blisteringly hot and behaving strangely. It felt charged and inconstant, as though agitated particles were darting about like shoals of startled fish. Cooper could feel his skin reddening, burning as though he stood before a blast furnace. Squinting at the marble floor, he tried to follow the pulsing, shimmering rays—rays that originated from a single source.
It was straight ahead. What terrible energies were bombarding them? Bombarding the child in Hazel’s womb? But Cooper could not stop or turn back. Stretching forth his hand, Cooper felt his way forward, groping and snatching at the empty air.
Three steps later, he touched something.
Cooper froze as a trembling, unseen hand closed about his own. It exerted very little pressure but conveyed an impression of appalling strength. Cooper felt as though he’d grazed the teeth of an iron trap, one that could snap shut at any moment. But somehow, Cooper could tell this being wanted to communicate, was trying to communicate as best it could at this moment. Clearing his throat, he spoke in a calm, cautious voice.
“Max, it’s Cooper. Hazel and Peter are with me.”
The grip upon his hand tightened to the point of pain. Cooper gave a slow, shuddering exhale. Carefully, William. Very carefully …
“We’re your friends,” he said quietly. “Please let us see you.”
The grip slackened somewhat. Gradually, the blinding radiance began to dim, its heat dissipating. Lights swam before Cooper’s eyes. Blinking them away, he raised his head and gazed at the boy.
Max stood an arm’s length away. There was not a speck of white in the boy’s eyes. They were black throughout, as dark as the void and rimmed with bloody tears that left red trails down his cheeks. He was breathing heavily, panting like a wounded animal as he clutched Cooper’s hand. His other hand gripped the gae bolga, which glowed so hot and white it might have been drawn from the sun’s core. The spear was utterly silent, and this frightened Cooper far more than when it wailed.
“Are you all right, Max?” said Varga cautiously. “Are you injured?”
No response.
Cooper glanced around the museum. Its fires had been quenched. Everything within it—exhibits, statues, corpses, creatures—was piled high against the walls in smoking, mangled heaps. Somewhere in all that wreckage was Scathach. Were her killers there, too? Looking up, Cooper saw that the balconies had been destroyed. Gaping holes remained where they had been, the edges charred and jagged.
The clones had to be dead. Had to be. But still, he recalled the advice he’d once given Max: Don’t believe it till you’ve seen the bodies. The clones were tough beyond reckoning. Just look at where they came from …
Hazel inched forward. “Max, are you …?”
She faltered as he turned toward her. It was impossible to tell if Max was really seeing her or simply staring through her. His trembling intensified. When he finally spoke, he managed only one word.
“Prusias.”
The word was both a question and statement. Hazel winced, as though frightened the answer might displease him. “The bunker is down on Sublevel Twenty-Two. It’s where Bram’s Key was hidden.”
Cooper groaned inwardly. Of course Prusias would use Bram’s Chamber for his bunker. It was tucked deep in the Workshop and had been constructed by the Archmage himself long ago. Only David had been able to decipher and unravel the room’s enchantments in their quest for Bram’s Key. Was it big enough to house Prusias? Cooper had never actually seen the interior. None of them had. Once they’d opened the door, all hell had broken loose. Only the Workshop knew what was beyond that door. By now they’d have modified it to suit Prusias.
Releasing Cooper’s hand, Max dimmed his radiance and brushed past them to make for the archway. They followed at a distance, wary and uncertain. The Workshop appeared eerily empty, its corridors a flashing red haze of smoke and emergency lights. Now and again a tremor shivered through the floor or they heard the report of distant gunfire from an air duct. Apparently, the revolt was still going strong.
Cooper and the others followed this stranger as he walked past laboratories and greenhouses, manufacturing plants, and engine rooms. While Max had dimmed his radiance, it had not disappeared. Flickers of pale fire still danced about his person, illuminating him in the darker hallways and crackling with sudden brilliance and intensity. Now and again, he would stop and lean upon the gae bolga, as though gathering himself. It was like watching a newly birthed foal stand and take its first steps.
It would take time to reach Bram’s Chamber. If they were on Level 18, it would be forty levels beneath them. Normally William Cooper would pause to work out a strategy, to scout and assess the forces he would face. But with Max in his current state, they were in uncharted waters. The being they followed did not seem interested in precautionary measures.
Instead, he marched stolidly ahead, passing broken pod banks and empty dining halls. Cooper wondered at his objective until they passed through an arch into a sprawling, circular space hundreds of feet across. The arch from which they’d entered was one of six surrounding a cluster of gigantic pipes and bundled tubes that protruded from the floor and soared up until they met the distant ceiling. The biggest pipes were over fifty feet across and made of steel, but the tubes were clear and sheathed translucent cables or glowed with superheated gases. Unattended computer banks were situated along the room’s perimeter, but Max ignored these and made for the glass encasement that housed the pipes and tubes. A hand plucked at Cooper’s sleeve.
“What’s he doing?” hissed Hazel.
“I don’t—”
A company of Workshop troops rushed through one of the entrances, a hundred hulking figures encased in full-body armor and assault helmets. Most hefted automatic rifles, but several carried plasma-powered cannons that could melt all but the toughest materials.
“Fade,” muttered Cooper.
Hazel and Varga obeyed instantly. As the last soldiers thundered in, the three spread apart so as not to provide a single target. But Cooper did not think the soldiers had even noticed them. They had either seen Max on some surveillance camera or they had the bad luck to stumble upon the terrifying being now in their midst.
Even so, the group moved slowly as sudden movement would render fading useless. Cooper assumed the soldier’s helmets probably had heat-detection capabilities, but under the current circumstances he did not think this would be an issue. Compared to the energy Max was radiating, they would not even register.
As for Max, he did not appear to even notice the soldiers. Instead, he began circling the wall of tinted glass that encased the massive pipeworks.
The troops quickly took up positions, their weapons trained on the intruder. When Max paused at a metal door set within the glass, a soldier issued a command in a harsh, mechanized voice. Cooper could not quite make it out, but didn’t need to. Whatever the order was, Max ignored it. Two seconds later, the troops opened fire.
Gun muzzles flashed like strobe lights, discharging thousands of rounds in the space of a sneeze. Instantly Cooper, Hazel, and Varga dropped to the floor. The barrage sounded like hail pounding on a tin roof. Although hundreds of bullets were being fired, they did not strike their target. An invisible barrier repelled them, triggering a spray of sparks as bullets ricocheted to strike the glass wall, metal door, and nearby computer equipment. Some of the soldiers staggered back and fell as though rebounding rounds had struck them.
Cooper was dumbstruck. From his vantage, it did not look like a single bullet had so much as grazed Max.
But they had gotten his attention.
Turning from the door, Max faced his attackers, the gae bolga as bright as a thunderbolt in his hand. Upon seeing his face, several of the soldiers dropped their weapons and fled, pushing past the others to disappear down the corridor from which they’d come. But the others maintained their clusters.
Cooper’s jaw clenched. Run, you idiots!
A moment later, the soldier nearest Max slowly turned and pointed his weapon at his neighbor. The gun was shaking, its laser sight dancing on the target’s chest. Other soldiers began to follow suit, turning with rigid, unwilling movements to train their weapons upon one another.
“Stop!”
The voice was Hazel’s. She became clearly visible as she rose and broke into a run. Springing up, Cooper raced after her, catching her around the waist and swinging her around to shield her. Max regarded them without emotion, energy shimmering about his form like the sun’s corona. His gaze was so remote it might have been starlight from another universe.
Hazel struggled wildly. “You’re not a monster!” she cried. “You’re Max McDaniels. Our Max! And we love you!”
Cooper smiled grimly. Hazel’s emotions had blinded her. She insisted on pretending that the being before them was Max McDaniels, the boy she’d taught at Rowan. But she could not have been more mistaken. This was not “their Max.” Cooper had no idea if it was a god, a devil, or Death itself. But he did know one thing with absolute certainty: this being was about to destroy them.
The realization did not trigger panic, dread, or even sorrow. If they were going to die, Cooper was grateful they were together—he and Hazel and the baby. Love wasn’t something he thought he’d ever experience. But he had, and it was probably more than he deserved. He only regretted that he wouldn’t get to meet and raise their child. Not in this life, anyway.
These thoughts flashed by as images, impressions, and feelings of startling clarity. He never imagined life could be so vivid. An overwhelming sense of peace washed over him. Setting Hazel down, he turned to face Max just as Varga came up beside them.
“I am not afraid,” Varga called out to the silent stranger. “I’ve witnessed this moment many times, Max McDaniels—even before I saw you on that train years ago. And yet I chose to save you that day. And I choose to be here now, even though it may mean my death. Now it is your turn. What will you choose?”
The being lifted his chin defiantly. Cooper felt a glimmer of hope, for it was an unmistakably human gesture—a gesture strongly characteristic of the Max he knew.
All at once, the Workshop soldiers laid down their weapons. They did so in perfect unison, as though executing a drill. Max’s eyes never left Varga’s. Hoisting up their injured comrade, the soldiers retreated swiftly through the archway.
Cooper stared at the guns upon the floor. Why had Max bothered to disarm them? Those weapons couldn’t hurt him …
They could hurt us.
Was Max protecting them? Whether he had spared their lives and the soldiers out of compassion or merely to defy Peter’s visions did not matter. Hazel’s instincts had been right; there was still a glimmer of the old Max—their Max—within that inhuman juggernaut.
Turning away from them, Max lifted the gae bolga and cut through the steel door set within the glass that encased the pipes and tubes. The blade pierced the material so easily that carving an opening was like drawing an outline with chalk. Pushing the heavy section inward, Max stepped across the threshold and made for one of the largest steel pipes. Cooper and the others followed.
They kept back ten feet or so as Max cut a sizable opening in the pipe’s side and kicked it inward. Cold air billowed out, forced from above. Evidently, the pipe was an enormous airshaft. Without the slightest hesitation, Max stepped through the opening and plunged from view.
Cooper glanced at the others. “Can you two levitate?”
Varga nodded. Hazel looked incredulous: Of course a Promethean Scholar can levitate!
“Well, then,” said Cooper. Without further ado, he took three quick steps and dove through the pitch-dark opening.
He let himself free fall. He felt his body accelerating, the air rushing past as he plummeted in the blackness. As he approached terminal velocity, the sense of movement diminished, replaced by a surreal feeling of weightlessness—as though he were floating and not falling hundreds of feet per second. Far below, he could see Max and the gae bolga, two receding lights reflecting on the pipe’s interior. The spectacle was strangely beautiful, but Cooper was a pragmatist. The airshaft had no lights or floor markers—no way of gauging where they were. How far had they fallen? Half a mile? More? Would Max know when to stop? Three seconds later, he had his answer.
Clang!
The noise rang from far below, like a sledgehammer striking a spike. It must have been Max, for his radiance was no longer receding but growing larger as Cooper plunged soundlessly toward it. He appeared to be clinging to the pipe’s wall as easily as a gecko. Sparks flashed as Max plunged the gae bolga’s blade through the pipe wall. A dim beam of light pierced the darkness. It widened as Max cut an opening and slipped through.
Cooper made for the light, now controlling his plunge with subtle applications of mystic energy. The pipe was wide enough that he did not have to expend much, just enough to slow his descent and shape a trajectory that would bring him through the opening. Banking slightly, he twisted like a skydiver, angling his body and adjusting his speed. Catching hold of the opening’s rim, he swung himself through and landed nimbly on his feet.
He found himself in a dim cavern of dark, rough-hewn rock. While this room was considerably smaller and less finished than the one they had just left, the basic layout was similar, a central cluster of pipes and tubes surrounded by unattended control terminals. Thirty feet away, an instrument panel was blinking, illuminating veins of quartz and copper in the walls.
Straight ahead, Max was climbing a metal stairway that connected the sunken floor with a walkway leading to a steel fire door set within the rock wall. Above that door, a small surveillance camera was silently panning across the room. A voice hissed behind Cooper.
“Help me through!”
He turned to see Hazel hovering weightlessly inside the airshaft. Reaching within, Cooper took her hand and tugged her inside the cavern as though she were a balloon. She kicked her legs in the empty air until they settled on solid ground. Varga slipped in quietly after her and landed with practiced ease. Cooper was not entirely surprised. Before his injuries, Peter Varga had been a capable field Agent.
Upon the walkway, Max opened the fire door and left the room. The three followed at a distance as the shimmering youth strode down dark, rough passageways hollowed from solid rock. No one at the Workshop actually lived this deep; these areas were reserved for mining and for experiments too disruptive or hazardous for the occupied levels.
Despite its winding ways, Max seemed to know precisely where he was going. As he walked, his aura gleamed on girders and turbines, mine cars and rail tracks. And that aura was growing brighter.
Varga grunted, his cane rapping steadily on the rock. “My soul is close. I can feel it. The demon will not be far.”
“And what do we intend to do when we get there?” said Hazel.
Cooper was going to reply when a confused but familiar baritone cried out from Hazel’s jacket. “Where the hell am I? Am I dead?”
A tapered, yamlike head peeked out from the jacket’s front pocket. Hazel nearly kissed it. “Toby! I’m so relieved to see you conscious. How are you feeling?”
“Groggy,” he sniffed. “And out of the loop. Why are you whispering, eh? What’s going on? I demand an update!”
Cooper’s update was terse. “Scathach is dead, Max has snapped, and we’re closing in on Prusias.”
The smee sank out of sight.
Cooper turned to the others. “Listen, when we reach—”
“I think we’re there,” Varga breathed.
They paused on the threshold of a larger cavern served by a pod bank and littered with cargo vehicles and excavation equipment. Across the way, Max stood before a broad ramp that led up to a blast door some fifty feet in diameter. Apparently the Workshop had expanded Bram’s Chamber by a considerable margin. Cooper saw its former door mounted above the new entrance like an ornament or trophy, a circular slab of greenish stone inscribed with an image of the Egyptian god Thoth.
“For a secret bunker, it’s not exactly subtle,” remarked Hazel.
“I think it’s safe to say the bunker has been designed to accommodate Prusias’s true form,” said Varga. “Why else would it need a door that size?”
Cooper had never seen the demon’s true form. While he’d been present during the battle at Rowan when the Great Red Dragon rose up from the sea, he’d also been possessed. The only thing he could recall with any certainty was thousands of horrified cries when the demon’s heads reared into view from beneath the cliffs. While everyone agreed the monster had seven heads—seven bearded heads with blank, ravenous eyes—people disagreed about the monster’s scale. Some swore the demon was a thousand feet long. Others insisted he was even bigger, that his body could circle all of Old College.
And now we’ve got him cornered. Lucky us.
Just as Max stepped upon the ramp, floodlights in the cavern wall blazed on, spotlighting him with their powerful beams. He stared into their dazzling brilliance as though he wanted the cameras and watchers to see precisely who was at their door.
Crouching low, Cooper and his companions scurried to a more sheltered vantage from behind a rock formation. As they did so, dozens of heavy, gleaming cannons slid forward from recesses around the blast door, their barrels trained on Max.
When he stepped forward, they fired.
The barrage was deafening, a hail of bullets and crackling plasma beams that appeared to obliterate the ramp and nearby vehicles. Billowing plumes of smoke and dust roiled about the cavern floor, obscuring everything but a pale light at their center, a sun half veiled by storm clouds.
The firing stopped, the smoke dissipated, and Cooper saw Max standing atop the rubble of the pulverized ramp. He had barely moved. Staring up at the spotlights, the boy raised the gae bolga high.
Lightning erupted from its blade, snaking, forking, seeking, finding. Nothing escaped it; nothing was spared. Every spotlight and camera, cannon and gun exploded or split, warped and melted. When they lay in bubbling ruin, Max advanced toward the gleaming door.
Once he was close enough, he reared back and plunged the gae bolga three feet deep into the massive door. The gae bolga screamed as it pierced the metal, an otherworldly cry that could only have come from the Morrígan herself. Max left the spear anchored there, poised and quivering, as he backed away.
“What’s happening?” hissed Hazel.
Cooper had no idea, but Varga was leaning forward, his spectral eye fixed upon the door. “I have never seen anything like this,” he breathed. “The door is … dying.”
Even as he said the word, great fissures and cracks appeared in the metal. Its gleaming surface grew dull, darkening until it was the shade of rusted iron.
A blood-chilling moan filled the cavern, greedy and almost sensual.
All at once, the door’s material became a dark powder, like charcoal or graphite. It collapsed in a single sheet, the grains streaming about the gae bolga as it remained fixed in midair. Walking forward, Max grasped the spear as he passed and strode down what looked to be a lighted tunnel.
An astonished Hazel turned to her companions.
“Do we go after him?”
Cooper’s reply was automatic. “Of course. We have a mission.”
His wife placed her hand over his and gave him a probing look. “William, do you believe our contributions will make one iota of difference?”
The prospect of abandoning a mission was antithetical to Cooper’s code, but Hazel spoke the truth. He questioned very much whether they could tip the scales in the coming conflict. Before he could answer, however, Varga rose.
“I must go on,” he said, wiping dried blood from his chin. “Prusias has my soul and countless others in his keeping. It’s my duty to recover them.” Varga gave an understanding smile. “I do not ask the two of you to join me. This is my mission, not yours. And you have other considerations.”
He gestured at Hazel’s belly.
She straightened abruptly. “Absolutely not,” she said decisively. “You must forgive me, Peter. In all the excitement, I’d quite forgotten about your objective. We may not have much to offer Max, but we can certainly help you.”
A groan sounded from her pocket.
From the tunnel’s mouth came a rumble like distant thunder. Cooper unsheathed his kris and thumbed its wavy edge. “Come on,” he said, rising and setting off across the cavern.
The others followed after him but could not move nearly as quickly. Leaping over the ramp’s remains, he dashed inside the tunnel, his boots making little sound as they struck its metal floor. The tunnel went straight for about a hundred yards before arcing left. Ahead, he could see the shadows of running figures approaching. With an Amplified leap, he sprang fifty feet up and clung, upside down, to the tunnel’s roof.
The figures soon came into view, a collection of laborers, engineers, and minor demons clutching musical instruments or wearing courtesan’s robes. It was a virtual stampede of slaves fleeing the imminent confrontation. Dropping from the ceiling, Cooper ignored their startled cries and continued up the tunnel.
Upon rounding the bend, he saw that Max was walking straight ahead, a solitary figure within a halo of crackling white light. Cooper closed the distance until he’d come within thirty feet. A hundred yards ahead, the tunnel opened onto a dim space where dark, sinuous shapes were gliding through the air.
The tunnel trembled suddenly, as though something enormous was moving about in the chamber ahead. A taunting voice rang out like thunder.
“Come on, you miserable whelp! Come finish what you started!”
Upon hearing the voice, Max broke into a trot and then a run. Cooper tried to keep up, but the boy was pulling swiftly away, sprinting with superhuman speed toward the tunnel mouth. When he reached it, he gave a howl and sprang up out of sight. Willing himself forward, Cooper reached the tunnel’s conclusion and gazed up.
High above, a furious midair battle was taking place in a domed chamber the size of an aircraft hangar. At first glance, it looked like huge black moths were swarming about a shimmering white star. But the moths were hundreds of airborne malakhim packed together so tightly that the star’s light was being smothered. As more malakhim joined the swarm, it became increasingly dense and spherical. The chamber gradually dimmed as the star was buried in their midst.
Cooper ducked when a black-robed figure glided swiftly past the tunnel entrance. Its obsidian mask portrayed an angelic face whose serene beauty contrasted sharply with its eager rush to join the others. Cooper had never seen malakhim fly or appear in such numbers. Max was trapped within a throng of fiends so densely packed, not even his light could escape anymore. He wouldn’t be able to breathe, much less swing a weapon.
Gloating laughter rang out. It echoed from an opening in the opposite wall, an opening so large that it dwarfed Cooper’s tunnel. Its impenetrable depths exuded a malevolence that was almost tangible. An honor guard of red-masked malakhim stood before the opening like tiny toy soldiers, their hands clasped atop greatswords.
“Take his blade!” the voice commanded. “He is nothing without his blade!”
Above, the grotesque swarming reached greater intensity, like honeybees clustering madly about a queen. Pieces of malakhim fell like rotten fruit—arms and legs, obsidian masks, entire bodies cut in two. But these casualties were few among a tireless press of hundreds. A moment later, the gae bolga had been wrenched from its owner’s hand and flung out of the living swarm.
The spear’s glow faded as it fell, tumbling end over end until its blade impaled the stone floor. And there it stood, upright and quivering, a second Excalibur. A gasp sounded behind Cooper. He turned to see Hazel’s bloodless face. Varga crouched beside her, sweating and breathless.
“We have to help him,” Hazel panted. “We have to try something!”
Cooper nodded. He was already reaching for his last vial of blood petals. The substance would be useless against Prusias, for the most powerful demons had habituated themselves to its effects. But Cooper had just seen it work very potently against malakhim.
“Inscribe a circle,” he muttered. “The strongest you can make.”
Varga shook his head. “Those won’t work against Prusias unless he’s been summoned.”
“It’s for the malakhim. Quick now!”
Using oil from one of Hazel’s flasks, the pair worked swiftly to trace a large circle in a radius around them. While neither had deep experience with summoning, every Rowan graduate learned protections against evil spirits. The most powerful were unique to specific entities, but there were others that, while less potent, had broader applications.
While they were busy, Cooper rummaged through his pack, praying that what he needed was unbroken. His quickly found it wrapped in several shirts—the bottle of scent Hazel had given him as a wedding present. Yanking out the stopper, he dumped its contents and refilled it with the crimson concoction from his flask. Behind him, Hazel gave an indignant grunt.
Rotating the egg-shaped bottle in one hand, Cooper rapped its surface with the blade of his dagger. Tiny cracks appeared in the glass, weakening the bottle without breaking it.
“Bring me the Hound!” roared the hidden speaker. “I want to taste his flesh, his fire, his soul!”
The roiling ball of malakhim began drifting toward the dark tunnel. It did not move easily, but listed and dipped as though trying to transport something very heavy. Now and again, the sphere shook with so much violence that slender beams of light managed to escape. Deep within the sphere’s core, a furious struggle was still taking place. Five hundred malakhim could barely contain this ball of living, raging fire. Cooper weighed the glass bottle in his hand. Perhaps they could tip the scales …
He checked on Hazel and Varga’s progress. The two were on their hands and knees, working toward each other as they inscribed sigils just within the circle’s border. Hazel was scribbling furiously, whispering incantations.
“Ready?” Cooper asked.
“Not yet,” muttered a sweating Varga. “Twenty seconds.”
Cooper glanced up. The malakhim had dragged their prisoner within a hundred yards of that yawning crevice. In its shadows, something stirred and thrust smoothly forward so that Cooper could just make out its features.
It was a grinning face the size of a house.
Cooper crossed himself. “Sorry, Varga. Time’s up.”
Dashing out from the tunnel, Cooper ran across the vast chamber until he came within range of the hellish sphere. Cocking his arm, he hurled the glass grenade with all his might and followed its swift, glittering arc.
The bottle smashed into the sphere’s lower quarter, exploding in a cloud of red mist that ignited like flash powder. Its fireball destroyed every malakhim it touched, leaving behind a crater, a weakness the swarm’s captive was quick to exploit.
Light burst through, shattering the malakhim’s hold with a force that sent them flying like shrapnel. The shock wave also blew Cooper back, tumbling him head over heels while obsidian masks rained down like volcanic debris. As Max landed in a crouch on the chamber floor, Cooper scrambled to his feet and limped for the tunnel. Seconds later, he spied a dozen wraithlike shadows converging swiftly upon his.
Just ahead were Hazel and Varga. They were shouting at him, imploring him to hurry. But Cooper kept his eyes on the closing shadows. They were almost upon him … one stretched out a hand to seize him.
With an Amplified burst, Cooper slipped beyond its reach. Taking a running leap, he soared like a long jumper and crashed into Varga. Twisting around, he saw the malakhim skimming low over the ground, racing toward them. Just before they reached the group, the circle burst into bright flames, unveiling ancient wards traced within. The malakhim swerved sharply like a flock of starlings. Circling around, they abandoned this lesser prey and doubled back to assist their master.
“What’s happening?” hissed Toby from Hazel’s pocket.
A transfixed Varga was staring over Cooper’s shoulder. “Nothing,” he lied. “Don’t look.”
Prusias was leaving his shelter.
Cooper had never witnessed anything more nauseating. Seven bearded human heads emerged, each attached by a sinuous neck to a massive serpentine body. The demon slid so smoothly out of the tunnel that his scarlet scales might have been oiled. Coil after rippling coil emerged, each as swollen as a blood-gorged leech. Was Prusias a thousand feet long? Two thousand?
The demon turned slowly about like a battleship circling a harbor. Each of the seven heads resembled Prusias in his human form—darkly handsome faces with plaited black beards—but their mouths were filled with jagged fangs while the eyes betrayed no glimmer of Prusias’s laughing, bullying persona. They were hauntingly blank and hungry, the eyes of a rabid animal.
And those eyes were fixed upon Max, who stood weaponless and alone at the chamber’s center. Instead of simply attacking, the demon seemed to be gauging his comparatively tiny opponent, assessing him as one might a poisonous wasp. The central head was dripping black blood from ugly wounds upon its face and throat—souvenirs from its first encounter with the gae bolga. The head grinned maliciously as the Great Red Dragon reared up and used his inconceivable bulk to drive the gae bolga flush as a coffin nail in the stone floor.
“There goes your bite, Hound,” the head chuckled. “Care to bark instead?”
Max said nothing. The red-masked honor guard now surrounded him. His radiance was no more than a flicker, but Cooper studied him carefully. The boy’s back was straight and that grim, unblinking smile would have given him pause.
But not Prusias. The demon’s pride and rage were kindling like wildfire. Blys’s king heaved himself up so that his crownless heads nearly scraped the soaring roof.
“What are you smirking about, maggot?” he demanded. “You think your people have conquered me? They’ve merely taken a city. I’ll build a bigger one, raise a stronger army. And when the little Faeregine is slain, I’ll return to Rowan. I’ll raze its buildings, poison its fields, and devour its people like the sheep they are!”
As these words echoed, the demon’s last coil finally slid free of the tunnel. A tiny figure trailed its tapering tip, no larger than a human toddler. It ran across the chamber, waving its arms. The being was an imp—a red-skinned imp in courtier’s clothes. Its voice was a squeak in the vast chamber.
“Stop!” he cried. “My king, you must not kill him!”
One of the seven heads whipped about, its voice a simmering growl. “Silence, Mr. Bonn. Go back to my burrow.”
But the imp was insistent. “Milord, if you slay him, you will be cheating the Atropos.”
“Cheating? I’m doing their job for them.”
“Precisely,” said the imp. “The boy’s name has been written in the Grey Book. It’s the Atropos’s sacred duty to end his life. If you deprive them of that honor, they may well turn against Your Majesty!”
“Let them!” Prusias snarled. “Let them dare raise a hand against me!”
The imp shook his head in exasperation. “Your Majesty armed them with Set’s knife!” he hissed, before softening his tone to one of calm, pleading reason. “Spare the Hound’s life and take him captive. David Menlo is his dearest friend. We could use him to negotiate a—”
“I DON’T NEGOTIATE!”
Prusias lashed the far wall with his tail. The shock staggered the malakhim and knocked the imp off his feet. Surging forward, the demon crushed a dozen malakhim in his eagerness to get at the Hound. The central head shot forward, swift as a rattlesnake, its jaws opened wide.
Max sprang to meet it.
Evading the snapping teeth, Max caught hold of a braid in the demon’s tangled beard. Swinging under its jaws, he landed on the demon’s throat and plunged his arm straight into the festering wound—the very wound the gae bolga had made years before.
Cooper had never heard such an anguished howl. The demon’s entire body recoiled, whipping around with such momentum that he crashed to the floor. His minions fled to escape his thrashing coils and heads, which were snarling and snapping blindly at anything they touched.
Clinging to the demon, Max gave an unearthly scream and erupted with light. Prusias went berserk, dashing his head against the floor, trying desperately to shake his attacker off. But his attacker held fast, no longer a being of flesh and blood, but of white shimmering fire whose energies were pouring into the Great Red Dragon.
Prusias began splitting apart, his coils swelling and cracking as the pale fire consumed him from within. The heads were pleading now, bellowing and weeping for mercy from the god that was burning them alive. Even their eyes were ablaze, the sockets vomiting smoke as the seven heads collapsed and writhed on the chamber floor.
The demon’s bloated body began to sag and hiss like a punctured zeppelin. As it collapsed, the smoldering hide began to shrivel and contract. Once the last scarlet scraps burned away, the spirit of white fire became flesh again, its form returning to that of the black-eyed god. At his feet, Prusias’s human shape sprawled in a heap of purple silk robes. Where the Great Red Dragon’s body had lain were thousands of glittering gemstones.
With an exultant cry, Varga started forward, picking his way among the scattered rubies and sapphires, diamonds and emeralds. He made for one in particular, identifying it instantly among the multitude. Cooper and Hazel followed after him, stepping over the jewels as though they were sacred. And indeed they were, for trapped within each was a mortal soul.
To Cooper’s surprise, Varga was not the only seeker among the gemstones. The remaining malakhim were also approaching, walking slowly like lost and weary pilgrims. Like Varga, they were drawn to particular stones that they pressed to their breasts as though they’d been reunited with the dearest friend imaginable. And when they did so, their obsidian masks dissolved into a pearly mist, revealing translucent, ghostly faces, both male and female. Each whispered their sin aloud before swallowing their jewel and vanishing.
“I coveted gold …”
“I murdered my brother …”
“I lusted for knowledge …”
“I betrayed my child …”
When the malakhim had all disappeared, Varga and Hazel began gathering up the remaining gemstones. The only sound in the vast chamber was Mr. Bonn’s quiet sobbing.
The imp came to kneel by his master. Cooper did not know how Prusias remained when the Great Red Dragon had been destroyed, but the demon appeared to be alive and even conscious as he peered up at his conqueror. Gazing down at Prusias with an icy remoteness, Max pointed at the demon’s neck.
With a shaking hand, Prusias removed the lymra torque and surrendered it to its true owner. Taking the coppery ring, Max placed it around his neck before extending his hand toward where the gae bolga had been buried. The spear rose from the floor, withdrawing smoothly from the rock until it hovered fifty yards away. Once free, it flew straight to its master’s hand.
Prusias gave the weapon a baleful stare as Max caught it. Grimacing, he coughed blood into his fist. “I was the Great Red Dragon,” he rumbled in a gruff, bewildered voice. “But the Great Red Dragon is no more. How am I alive?”
Max’s voice was iron. “You are only Prusias now.”
Recalling the Director’s orders, Cooper realized the gae bolga’s blade was poised perilously close to the demon’s throat. Hazel and Varga must have noticed the same thing, for they gathered around him with wary, anxious expressions.
“We need him alive,” said Cooper quietly.
Max did not respond, but continued contemplating Prusias and his imp as though weighing a judgment. Several moments passed before he reached down and seized the king by his beard, dragging him up so their faces were inches apart.
“What will it be, Hound?” the demon whispered. “Death or a train ride?”
Releasing Prusias, Max raised the gae bolga high. When it struck the floor, they all vanished in a clap of thunder.