He didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to, smudging away the tears until the world came back into focus. There was nothing left of Pan but a steaming smear of blood on the molten stone. But the demons still fought over her, trying to devour every last piece. Her scream had fallen silent, her soul already dragged to wherever it was the demons took them. Marlow could still hear it, though. He would hear that sound until the day he died.
He gagged, trying to get to his feet and falling hard. There was nothing left in him.
Herc was trying to approach the demons but the heat was too much. He dropped to his knees in the flickering haze, howling her name, his hands clawing at his head as if he was trying to tear it open, rip out the memories of the last few seconds.
Charlie stood beside Marlow, quiet, his jaw clenched.
“We don’t have long,” he said.
“What?” was all Marlow could think of to say. Pan was dead. She was worse than dead. Hell had her now, and all it had to offer was an eternity of suffering. Charlie held out a hand to him, glancing at the chaos where Pan had died. The demons seemed to be slowing, which was weird. Why weren’t they coming for him, too?
“Come on,” Charlie said. “You might have more time. We might be able to do this.”
“Let them take me,” Marlow said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters to me,” said Charlie. “It matters to everyone else on this planet. You’re the only one who can go out there, who can find whatever it was Meridiana showed you. You’re the only one who can destroy the Engine.”
“It’s my fault,” he said, the hatred boiling inside him. “I never should have gone in the pool. I should have waited. She died because of me.”
“And don’t let it be for nothing,” said Charlie. “You heard her. Finish this. Finish it for her.”
One of the demons had frozen completely, the other two pawing weakly at the ground. It was glowing less fiercely now as the passage to hell closed up, sealing Pan down there. They still showed no interest in Marlow.
Herc limped over, his feet scuffing on the broken floor. His skin was glowing from the heat, his forehead blistered. But it was his eyes that burned most fiercely. He looked at Marlow and in that second Marlow saw a world’s worth of rage. Then he blinked, swallowing it back down.
“Charlie’s right,” he croaked. “This is our only shot. We’ve got to get to work.”
Marlow took a deep, wheezing breath. Reaching into his pocket, he fired off a hit of his inhaler, the blockage shifting. Then he grabbed Charlie’s hand. Standing up was the single hardest thing he had ever had to do, but he managed it. Charlie clung on to him, the only thing stopping him from falling.
But then maybe falling wasn’t such a bad thing? Maybe he’d fall right through the cooling stone, right into hell. After all, hell couldn’t be that bad, could it? Not with Pan there.
“I have to—” He broke into a coughing fit, the monster trying to wrap its fingers around his throat. He used his inhaler again, watching the second demon freeze into a sculpture of itself. “I have to go get her.”
“No, you don’t,” said Herc.
“I mean it,” he said. “She’s down there. I can find her.”
And he could, couldn’t he? It was hell, but they didn’t even know what that meant. If he’d learned anything in the last few weeks it was that in this world, nothing was as it seemed.
“Marlow,” said Herc, planting his hands on Marlow’s shoulders. He fixed him with those tired gray eyes. “Pan is gone. But you’re still here. We can still end this. Nobody has ever come back.”
“I can—”
“Think of your mom, Marlow.”
But he couldn’t. All he could see was Pan. All he could feel was her face pushed into his neck, her lips against his, the unmistakable, unforgettable smell of her.
He looked past Herc and Charlie. The last demon seemed to be recovering, its movements growing faster. It looked up from the ground, its stone snout sniffing at the air, searching for him. His heart gave a sudden concussive thump, one that made his whole body rattle. And he didn’t know whether it was fear he felt, or something else.
Excitement.
Because he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what he had to do.
“You finish it,” he said, not taking his eyes from the demon.
“We can’t,” Herc growled. “Not without a contract.”
“Dude,” said Charlie. “We need you. Come on. Don’t you dare run from this.”
The demon opened its muzzle and roared. Herc and Charlie twisted around, the three of them watching as it tugged its feet free from the setting stone.
“No,” said Charlie.
“I’ll take it,” said Herc, hefting the iron bar. “Charlie, get to the armory, there are shotguns in there. I’ll hold them back.”
Marlow pushed past him.
“No,” he said. “You won’t. Let them take me, and I’ll find her.”
“Please, Marlow,” said Charlie, a tear winding its way down from his eye, instantly evaporating. “After everything we’ve been through, don’t do this. Don’t run. All those times you left me, man. All those times you thought you’d do better by yourself. This isn’t one of them. We can fight them.”
A spark of lightning from somewhere out in the Engine. More demons on their way.
“You guys do what you can,” said Marlow. “I’ve got my mission.”
“She’ll hate you,” said Herc. “I can promise you that. You give yourself to the demons like this, without a fight, and even if you manage to find her, even if you make it through the pits of hell and somehow find her, she’ll know what you did.”
But it was Pan.
It was Pan.
“Remember Brianna,” said Herc. “Nobody comes back, ’cept as a wormbag. You do that to her and she’ll hate you for the rest of time.”
But this was different. He wasn’t using the Engine to bring her back, he was going down there himself.
It would work.
He took another step toward the demon and it stared at him with that eyeless face. Its stone muscles flexed, its snout flaring as it searched him, as it tried to work out what he was doing. The last few days were a blur of terror and violence but there was still a voice inside him—not his, but Meridiana’s. She rode inside his blood and through her eyes he saw a place of ruin and fire, a place that looked so alien, but also so familiar.
Somebody has come back. Her words whispered against the inside of his skull, as soft as spider legs. Hell is just a word.
“Hell is just a word,” he repeated.
Someone grabbed his arm but he tugged himself loose, taking another step.
“Marlow,” said Charlie.
“I’m sorry,” Marlow said, looking back, and the way his friend’s face fell broke his heart. He turned to Herc, and he wasn’t sure if the words he spoke belonged to him or to Meridiana. “Nothing is what it seems.”
Nobody replied. Charlie turned away, staring out into the Engine. Herc just watched, shaking his head.
“You always run,” said Charlie.
But this time he was running for the right reason.
He was running in the right direction.
Another bolt of lightning tore across the ceiling, thunder echoing around the Engine. For some reason Marlow found himself thinking of his brother, in Afghanistan, throwing himself onto a roadside bomb. He’d given his life for a war, and Marlow was doing the same thing.
Was it worth it? Was it worth dying for?
He would have said yes.
Pan was worth dying for. She was worth going to hell for.
“I’ll find her,” Marlow said.
He closed his eyes, tuned out a distant, demonic scream, tuned out the stench of sulfur and the roar of something pulling itself from the stone, tuned out Charlie’s sobs, Herc’s final pleas. He tuned it all out, and saw only her—Pan leaning in to kiss him, Pan lying next to him in a hotel bed, Pan throwing herself into battle, and Pan the first time he’d seen her, held above the ground by a demon.
Do your worst, she had said, not the slightest trace of fear in her voice. Incredibly, the thought of it—of her—made him smile. It gave him strength.
“Do your worst,” he echoed, speaking to the demons, to Ostheim, to hell itself.
And with that, he threw himself at the demon.
It charged and he felt its heat, for an instant, the sudden blast of choking sulfur against his skin. A roar of delight as it opened its bear-trap jaws to claim him, then—
It was like being loaded into a slingshot, a reverse bungee jump.
Something wrenched him out of the world, out of his body, a cold, hard grip on his soul. He screamed, it was the only thing he could think to do.
He burned down, through the ground and the dirt and the mud and the stone, subway fast, everything a blur. Then he plunged into a tunnel of fire, the whole world roaring as he was pulled through it. There were faces in the flames, demons that ran alongside him like a pack of wolves, howling their fury into the inferno. His fear was mindless, and absolute. There was nothing else left of him but terror.
He fell, and he fell, spinning now, so fast that he could feel the very essence of himself being pulled apart by centrifugal force, unwinding. The tunnel burned brighter, as if he was a bullet fired into the sun, but there was no pain, just the endless rush and roar of the fall.
There was something down there. He couldn’t see it so much as sense it—something big, something bad. It vacuumed him in like he was a mote of dust, the universe shuddering with the force of it. And he could see it now, too, just a glimpse of something vast and dark, there and gone, there and gone, there and gone as he spun in relentless circles. It grew, impossibly big, impossibly fast, a black hole in reality. It opened beneath him and he punched into it, into that awful, soul-ending darkness.
And then there was nothing.
Nothing.
No light. No sound. No feeling.
Marlow wasn’t sure if he was standing up or lying down or just floating. He couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open or closed. The quiet was utterly unbroken. He could not hear his own pulse, or the rattle of his breath. It was almost peaceful.
If this was hell, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as everyone said. Where were the demons? Where was the fire?
He tried to move but couldn’t, a bright, hot flare of panic burning through him. He wasn’t even sure if he had a body to move. What if this was hell? Just the void, just nothing. What if he was buried alive here, left to rot for a million million years? The thought of it, of being alone here, drove what was left of his mind right to the brink of madness. What if—
“Marlow?”
The word was a whisper, right into his ear. He tried to turn his head, reached out for it with arms he didn’t have. He wanted to laugh, wanted to cry, wanted to speak, but he could do nothing but listen, willing the voice to speak again. An eternity seemed to pass before it did.
“Marlow?”
Not a whisper this time but a voice, Pan’s voice.
And she sounded pissed.
“Marlow,” she said again. “You idiot.”
Pan? he tried to say.
“Marlow, just open your eyes,” said Pan. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Open your eyes. The easiest thing in the world, the hardest thing in the world. Just open your eyes, Marlow, he told himself.
And he did.