| |
––––––––
STARING DOWN AT THE floor, Kurt chanted in a language that I’d never heard before. The words sounded harsh to my ears and hurt my head. Ava cringed away and Mark pulled her behind him protectively. Flynn did the same with Sabine. Reece didn’t try to shield me. He stood at my side as my equal rather than my protector.
We looked to Mark for guidance and he sent us a helpless look as a ring of fire formed in the carpet. Flames gushed almost to the ceiling and the carpet was burned away. When the flames died down, a pit was revealed. Black as midnight, it was so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. Pure evil emanated from it. From far away, a babble of harsh voices rose. A fight ensued and one of the imps won. The door slammed shut and the voices were cut off.
Clawed hands appeared and gripped the edges of the hole. As inky black as the first demon, the hell spawn laboriously hauled himself out of the opening. Collapsing on his side, he recovered far more quickly than the first one had. Rising to his feet, he opened fiery red eyes and glowered down at us. He was easily eight feet tall.
“I will leave my minion to deal with you,” Kurt said. “You may have defeated my first imp, but I think you’ll find this one is far stronger. With a little more practice, I will soon be able to call forth a much more powerful demon. Then the end of the world shall begin and no force on this Earth can stop me.” With that fervent promise, he disappeared.
“Can you do anything about the demon?” Mark asked Ava.
Still cringing away, she shook her head. “My kind are not fighters. We are nurturers.”
“Fat lot of good that’s going to do,” Kala muttered, then looked at me. “Can you rustle up some more ghosts and get them to kill this thing?”
I shook my head. “The spirits that were trapped here have moved on. Even if there are more ghosts nearby, the wards will keep them out.”
There probably were more ghosts roaming the grounds, but I didn’t have time to go through the process of killing myself so I could pull them into our realm. It had taken Zeus’ death to push me that far in the first place. I doubted I’d be able to duplicate the process easily.
Speaking of Zeus, he crouched in front of me with his head down, growling at the demon. He recognized him as being the same type of creature that had killed him, only larger. His rage grew and I sensed something happening to him.
The death magic that I’d used to bring Zeus back swelled inside him. I blinked a few times when he seemed to be getting larger. Ava gasped in shock and I realized it wasn’t an optical illusion.
“What’s happening to him?” Kala asked. She sent me a frantic look, but I didn’t have any answers for her. I knew he was different now, but I had no idea what was going on.
We backed away as he changed from an ordinary Rottweiler into something that barely resembled a dog at all. He grew to roughly the size of a large horse, with talons, fangs and glowing red eyes. Shadows swirled around him and almost seemed to be a part of him. He pawed at the ground, leaving deep furrows in the carpet and in the concrete floor beneath.
“He has become a Wraith Hound,” Ava said in awe that was tinged with fear. “I have not seen one for many thousands of years.” She looked from Zeus to me. “I take it you have bound him to you with your death magic?”
I nodded wordlessly. Mark tore his eyes away from Zeus long enough to glance at Ava. “You and I are going to have a very long talk if we live through this,” he said. If she really was thousands of years old, then she’d be a wealth of information. The least she could do after using him to infiltrate the PIA was to tell him everything she knew about supernatural creatures.
The demon chortled at having so many victims to choose from and took a step forward. Zeus snarled and the sound reverberated around the room. The hell spawn paused, realizing he wasn’t going to be able to wipe us out without a fight. They circled each other, searching for weaknesses. The demon struck first, punching his hand through Zeus’ chest. Instead of tearing him apart, this time it passed through him harmlessly. Apparently, he could switch between being solid and being insubstantial at will. He’d become a cross between a zombie and a ghost.
Zeus almost seemed to grin, then he swiped a clawed paw at the imp. Furrows appeared in the inky skin of his abdomen. Rank black blood spurted and he shrieked in pain. Our guns were useless in this fight, we could only watch on as my gigantic guardian stalked the demon. He had become the canine equivalent of a vengeful spirit. The wounds he inflicted on the imp didn’t heal as they should have. Infused with death magic, he was deadly even to demons.
Bleeding black ichor and knowing he was doomed, the demon leaped at me. He was intent on causing as much havoc as possible before he was banished back to hell. Before I could react, Zeus lunged forward and snagged the demon by the leg. Tossing him into the air, he caught him in his mouth and bit him in half.
Falling to the floor in two pieces, the demon rolled over onto his back and shielded his face with his hands. Fangs tore into his stomach, strewing entrails all over the carpet. Both of his arms were ripped off and he was left defenseless. His head moved from side to side in frantic denial. His shrieks were loud enough to make me wince as Zeus stood on his shredded chest and bit his head off. With a few disgusting crunching noises, he chewed and swallowed. The body dissipated and his misshapen soul rose and was sucked back into the pit. The soul had looked gray when I’d seen it through my spirit’s eyes, but now I saw that it was as black as its skin had been. The hell gate closed with an audible pop, leaving a charred stain on the now bare concrete.
Zeus trotted over to me and bent his head so I could pet him. “Good boy,” I said and reached up to stroke his head.
Kala elbowed her way in beside me and hugged him hard. “You were awesome, fleabag!” She turned to me with a fierce grin. “Remind me never to piss him off.”
He calmed down beneath our praise and his rage evaporated. He returned to his normal size and the shadows retreated. His eyes lost their eerie glow and went back to being brown again. Now back in his usual form, it was hard to believe he’d been a vengeful ghost just a few moments ago.
“Now,” Mark said to the Board as if we hadn’t been interrupted. “As I was saying, it would be in your best interests to rescind the order to kill us. You need to focus on the real threat rather than on us.”
“I agree,” Cromby said faintly. He was staring at Zeus as if he was still a horse-sized wraith. “Now that we are aware of who is behind the coming Armageddon, we will do everything we can to stop him.” The fact that they still remembered Kurt meant he’d dropped his glamor for good and he was no longer hiding. Like a diva, he wanted the attention. He wanted everyone to know what was coming and who was behind it.
“It won’t be enough,” I said. “Even if every human on the planet bands together, it won’t be enough to stop what’s coming.” I hated to rain on their parade, but they needed to hear the truth.
“We managed to stop the golems before,” Kala said.
I shook my head wearily. “It isn’t the golems that I’m worried about. It’s the things Jorgen will be calling up from hell that will be the problem. The first two imps were just the start. He’s going to call up more and more of them. Each time we kill one, it will just return to the pit. Their bodies might not be immortal, but their souls seem to be. They’ll just come back with new bodies each time they die.”
A knock sounded on the door and we turned as it burst open. “Sir,” a harried guard said. “Something has happened that you need to see.”
“What is it?” Cromby snapped.
“You need to turn on the news, sir.”
Cromby retreated to his computer and pressed a button. A monitor descended from the ceiling behind us. We turned as the news came on. Pictures flashed up, showing a small city that was under siege. The hydra, Cerberus and spider golems were directing their reptilian, canine and arachnoid minions to attack. I didn’t see any demons or zombies yet, but I had a feeling this was just the warmup. Kurt was going to play with the humans before he unleashed utter devastation on them.
“Armageddon has begun,” Mark said in tones of finality.
We’d known for some time that a war was coming. Now that it had finally started, I realized that I wasn’t prepared. I apparently now had the skills I needed to win, but they seemed small and pathetic against the enemies that my nemesis could conjure up. We’d only seen a small taste of what we were going to face and I already knew we weren’t going to be able to defeat the coming hordes.
I was just a teenager and I had the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. Crippled with self-doubt, I couldn’t help but think that Fate had chosen poorly when she’d chosen me to be her champion.
