Pan watched as Marlow and Charlie struggled back toward the street, the canister slung between them. It seemed to dwarf them, even though she knew it was just an optical illusion caused by the pulse of black light it threw out, one that rippled through reality, that called to its master.
What were the chances of them being able to open it when even a bullet couldn’t shatter the glass? And more to the point, what was the chance of them opening it before the Devil finished its meal?
“You’ve really got a plan?” said Pan when the boys were finally out of sight. “Or shall we get on a boat and leave them to it?”
She was exhausted: four days in hell with no food and barely any sleep would do that to anyone. But she’d lasted longer than this without rest. However bad hell had been, the few sleepless days she’d had after caving Christoph’s head in with a lamp, when she’d hidden out in the sidings near the Harold, sobbing and screaming and knowing she could never go back, had been worse.
Herc started to run, old but fit, jogging like a drill sergeant. He looked back, and there was a smile on his face. She ran after him.
“I hear the Keys are nice this time of year,” he said. “Grab a couple of cocktails, moor the boat offshore, front-row view of the end of the world.”
She laughed as best she could, picturing Marlow’s face if he could hear them. But the vision of him there was a weight tied to her soul, like she was pulling the world behind her. She had to stop, sucking in air until everything stopped spinning.
Herc realized that she’d halted, turned back to her.
“They’ll be okay,” he said. “Marlow’s the luckiest son of a bitch I know.”
The words hadn’t even left his mouth before the Devil howled, a noise that churned the river into a frenzy, that snapped trees in half. Pan ducked instinctively, Herc dropping with her, both of them watching as a tornado of shadow twisted up over the land. It began to move, carving out a path of darkness. She had to turn away after a few seconds, but there was no denying which way it was heading.
It was going after Marlow.
Pan swore, was halfway to telling Herc to hurry up when she heard it—a noise coming from the space the Devil had just vacated. It took her a moment to recognize the voice, and it was the sudden twisting jolt of realization that made her double back, that made her step between the corpses of the trees, into the spiraling clouds of ash.
Ostheim was there, or a mess of parts that had once been him.
And somehow, he was still alive.
He was trying to claw his way out of the river. He had one half of his enormous mass on the bank, but he was bottom heavy, beached. He was an empty bag, most of his limbs lying flat and still. Only those at the front seemed to work, churning grooves in the mud as he tried and failed to escape.
“What do we do with him?” asked Herc, catching up with her, but Pan was already on the move, driven by fury. She broke into a run, tripping along the walkway that tracked the river. The air here was dense with smoke, fire devouring trees and buildings.
“Pan!” yelled Herc. “Wait!”
But she couldn’t. Her rage was too much, it was overpowering. All she could think about was Ostheim, his voice on the phone telling her that she was doing the right thing, that she was saving the world; the joy she’d felt when he had sent her down to the Engine, on a new mission. She had done something terrible, she had killed Christoph, and it was Ostheim who had offered her a way back to something good, a way back to herself.
And it had all been a lie.
She’d killed for him, she’d sent people to hell, for him. He’d played her like a puppet, and he’d brought about the end of the world.
Whatever happened now, he was going to pay for that.
The closer she got, the more immense he became. His deflated bulk had to have been fifty yards long, trailing into the unsettled water like a fishing net. The top half was a chaos of movement, his skin made up of what looked like leeches, millions of them squirming and coiling. There were glimpses of machinery there, too, flashes of bronze cogs, obsidian bones. Pan skirted around him, scanning the riverfront for anything she could use as a weapon, finding nothing. She splashed through puddles of black blood until she stood before what could only be his face.
He looked just like he had when he’d slaughtered Mammon, an engine of moving parts, as far from human as it was possible to be. And yet there was something there in that kaleidoscope of motion, a glimpse of humanity in the alien chaos. Half of his face had been eaten away, a gaping, car-size hole where the Devil had made a meal of it.
“Ostheim,” she said, surprised at the strength in her voice.
“Careful, Pan,” said Herc, standing by her side, the cop’s gun clenched in his hand.
The sound of the Devil was growing weaker as it chased its heart, but it was still like standing in a storm, the wind tugging at her clothes, her hair. The beast before her groaned, the movements becoming more frenzied. The leechlike components of it twisted around each other and a circle of flesh peeled open to reveal a single piggy eye. There was a mouth, too, but when it opened the only thing that fell out was a spew of liquid filth, one that reeked of forgotten food, of rot, of death. One of its working limbs spasmed into the air but fell flat again almost immediately. Pan stood her ground, wondering if the look in her eyes was enough to finish Ostheim off.
“You bastard,” she said. “You bastard. You did this.”
She stepped forward, slammed the heel of her bare foot into Ostheim’s flesh. It cracked like an old egg, more of that rancid gunk flowing out, steaming over her bare skin. She scraped her foot on the ground, using every ounce of restraint she had not to throw herself on him, finish off what the Devil had started.
“Not so cocky now though, huh?” she said. “You happy? All this time, everything you did, and this is your reward, bleeding out in the mud.”
Ostheim groaned, the noise of a thousand men dying in sync.
“You didn’t see this coming, did you?” She noticed one of his tentacles, flopping limply. There was a blade on the end of it, as dark and as sharp as flint. She stamped on it, crushing the jelly out of it until it was almost completely severed.
“Thank you,” she spat, grabbing it. It was surprisingly heavy, like an oversized baseball bat, great drops of blood falling from it, thumping when they hit the ground. But that blade was lethal. She’d seen dozens just like it slide into Mammon, reducing him to so much mince. Ostheim’s face had been sucked back in again, like he was hiding in there. The stump of his arm twitched, brushed over her face, leaving a trail of slime.
She hawked up a ball of spit, launched it at him.
“You’d better look at me. I’m going to kill you, so you’d better look at me.”
He loosed another demonic growl, one that formed guttural, bestial words. They fell from him in clumps of meat and blood, more liquid than sound.
“Hell is loose … and everything will die … It’s over.”
“For you,” said Pan. “Your master saw to that.”
“No,” he groaned, his body shuddering, slipping farther into the river. His last remaining limb poked at the ground, trying to find purchase. “I was made from him … It was always his blood. I will … live on … in him.”
“You tell yourself that,” said Herc, joining her. “Then watch as we crush its ass.”
Ostheim laughed, a sound that quickly became a cough. Pieces of him were literally dropping away, hitting the ground like rotten carcasses. He was decomposing as they watched. Pan put a hand to her mouth against the smell of it.
“There is no … way to … fight it,” he vomited. “It has already … begun … and it has already ended. Once he has his heart, there is nothing … nothing left to do but fall … to your knees … embrace him.”
“It won’t get the heart,” said Herc. “Marlow will destroy it.”
Ostheim just laughed.
“It cannot be destroyed,” he said. “Even if the body dies … the heart lives on. It will find … a new home, new flesh. Marlow … Marlow is the biggest fool … of all … blind to it … How can he not see … the truth? How can he not see…?”
“What?” asked Pan.
“It does … not matter,” Ostheim said. “Something as holy as this … can never die.”
“You sure about that?” Pan said. “Mammon sure died. Meridiana died. How are you any different from them?”
Ostheim’s face fell, his mouth grinding on some unthinkable truth. His body was collapsing into itself like a bounce house after a party, corrupting instantly, blossoming into mold. He looked at her through the rotten hole of his eye, his face growing slack.
“I will never die … hell is coming … and I will be—”
Pan rammed the blade into Ostheim’s head, her body acting without her permission, without her even knowing it was happening. She felt the thick bone of his scalp give, and when she tried to tug the weapon loose it was stuck fast. A spasm passed along Ostheim’s entire body, shaking him down the bank and farther still into the river.
“You could have waited, Pan,” said Herc. “He could have told us how to destroy the heart.”
She didn’t care. She kept her eyes on Ostheim as his face dissolved into a nest of vipers, squirming into nothing. Then gravity took hold, dragging his bulk beneath the waters.
She should have felt some sense of victory, she should have been laughing. Ostheim was dead, they’d never have to hear his lies again, never have to follow his orders. But she felt hollow inside, a doll. Ostheim was dead, yes, but his job was done, he’d birthed something so much worse.
A demon screamed from nearby, but the sound of it didn’t even shake her. She’d just killed Ostheim, after all, and this was just a demon—mindless, stupid.
“So,” she said, wiping the blood from her hands. “The plan.”
“Remind me never to piss you off,” said Herc. “Come on, we need to find something—”
He cocked his head, listening.
“Chopper.”
She could hear it, too, above the grind and roar of the Devil, over the screams, over the sirens. She couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from, but Herc obviously had better ears than she did because he was running along the river, heading for a pontoon that jutted out into the water. There was a warehouse there, and once they’d cleared it Pan saw a helicopter rocking on its landing pad, a handful of suited men climbing inside.
“Move!” roared Herc, shoving through the crowd. They protested and he bunched his fist, smashing a big guy in the nose and dropping him like a sack of bricks. The pilot was panicking, the chopper’s runners thumping out a rhythm on the pad as it struggled to rise. Herc lifted the cop’s gun, pointing it inside.
“What’s happening over there is bad,” he said. “But I’m worse.”
He gave them one of his specials, a glower that had scared Pan half to death more than once. It did the trick, the chopper emptying. Herc aimed the gun at the pilot.
“You, too.”
Herc took his place, squeezing into the pilot’s seat. Pan jumped in next to him.
“You know how to fly this?” she asked.
He smiled. “How hard can it be?”
Suddenly the chopper was lifting, wobbling like a spinning top at the end of its spin.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
They were high enough now to be able to look down on Jersey. The land was filled with smoke but she could still make out a trail of devastation that led away from the river. There was a pulse of black light there, a hole in the world. The sight of it made Pan giddy, made her dig her fingers into her seat until the tips of them burned. She wondered if it already had Marlow, if it had turned him to fire and ash like everyone else.
“To get a little surprise,” said Herc.
“A nuke?” she said, and she saw his face fall.
“It was supposed to be a surprise,” he said, pouting.
“Bloody hell, Herc, how many of those things do you have?”
“More than you’d think,” he said, spinning the helicopter around. “I just hope there’s time.”