The tranced Traders were still dying, but now the hellbreed were dying too. I saw Benny Cross from Louisiana, his ferret face alight as he opened fire with both guns; Sloane from gray rain-drenched Seattle, the charms in his hair chiming as he swung two silver-plated escrima sticks, Leon from Ridgefield, his battered tan duster scorched and spotted with blood while Rosita, his modified rifle, roared. Thierry Parvus from Saskatchewan, dropping out of the sky like God’s avenging while the copper charms on his boots’ fringes rattled and spat, Emoke Kolada and Dmitri Roslan, John Blake and John Carver and John Gray and Jack Quint and Jack Hell, Louis Darmor and MaryAnn Bright, too many to list. Some of them I only knew from word of mouth, others I knew because I’d worked with them; a few had come to Santa Luz to help out once or twice and I’d returned the favor. Many of them I didn’t know at all, but they were all hunters, elemental metal jingling and long coats swinging as they waded into the fray, their auras cracking with sea-urchin spikes like my own.
Their cries were a bright counterpoint over the rumble of ’töng, and I could have wept. Because we do something the ’breed don’t ever do: we work together. It means every hunter is worth more than their weight when it comes to holding back Hell’s tide; even when there’s a mass of them, every one of Hell’s scions only thinks of his own advantage. The hunters moved in tightly disciplined bands, cutting through the crowds, and I saw Anya Devi, her beads running with blue light and Benny Cross at her back, heading straight for the altar.
If even one of us could reach the altar, we could nip Perry’s little plan right in the ass.
Oh, God, oh God thank you—
Perry snarled, my fingers in his hair, and I slammed his skull against the yielding ground. It felt wonderful, so I did it again, realized it wasn’t going to do any good just as he got his wits about him and heaved up, tossing me away. I landed catfooted, had my balance in a split second, and leapt after him.
He was heading for the altar. He was too impossibly fast, streaking through trembling, overloaded reality. Anya was bogged down in a knot of struggling ’breed and Traders, her guns literally blazing and her scream of frustration a rising hawk-cry of effort.
Don’t worry, I’m on it, just keep going—
Another roar filled the stadium, and I didn’t have time to blink or even really register the fact that Weres had begun pouring into the stadium through flung-wide doors, leaping gracefully and flickering between animal and human form, clustering dazed Traders and bringing them down, trying like hell to avoid the ’breed. Lionesses, tawny-armed and honey-haired, working together to take down their prey, other cat Weres simply, magnificently fought; the bird Weres flickered through their feathered changeforms and raked with long talons. If they could keep the Traders away from the ritual death meted out near the altar, just maybe…
But we were doomed, because Perry was faster than all of us. He cleared a thrashing knot of ’breed in a single leap, and hurled himself at the pale oval spinning atop the altar’s black crouch. The curse-birds swarmed down, ripping past him in black bullet-shreds, and the oval became a dome of pitiless white light.
He couldn’t touch a Major Talisman. But he didn’t have to. All he had to do was get it close enough to the hungry orifice.
His foot flicked out, and he kicked the Lance directly into the incipient hellmouth.
The world exploded.
I was down and rolling as the shockwave passed over me, the fabric of reality bunching and twisting as it was torn rudely open. Bodies went flying, ichor splattering, and the noise was so big I moved in a bubble of silence as soon as it started, hot fluid trickles slipping down from my ears, kissing my neck. The pain was silver nails driven through my skull, a warm gush of blood loosing itself from my nose, but I was already committed to the leap. A collapsing hellbreed, his mouth a soundless scream of agony, folded as my boot kissed the top of his head, propelling me forward, my whip hand flicking forward and the gun in my other hand now.
Too late. The door was open.
Hellbreath streamed free, a wave of heat so fierce it was cold, and it was a good thing I was temporarily deaf. Surviving Traders fell, hands clapped to their ears, screaming silently. I had no time to think about how the Weres were handling this, I was too busy, bracing myself for the hit as a tide of half-seen shapes burst free of the hole in the world.
This wasn’t a regular portal, a hair-thin millisecond gap in the world for something to slip through. This was a full-fledged hellmouth, the dome of white light an obscene abscess swelling, pushing against the altar’s surface, hellbreed crawling out of the yawning light as Hell shoved them free.
I strained through air gone thick as lead, committed to my leap, as the mouth pulsed once, drooling hellbreed and the shadowy forms of arkeus like pus. Perry lifted his arms, braced against the flood of his kith and kin, and leaned forward. His mouth stretched, and the long grinding of Helletöng was a single word, rubbing through the deaf-noise and spearing every cell of my body.
The hole clotted, and for one second as I hung above him I thought perhaps it had closed of its own accord. But no, it was just heaving around something almost too big for it, and I must have known on some level. Because the gun was back on its holster before I hit the ground, my whip jolting free, and I dove for the altar as the hellmouth pursed its thin lips and vomited.
The gem on my wrist gave a hard, painful jerk. My whip uncoiled, silver jangling silently. My right-hand gun spoke, burning flooding my arm and the gem shrieking. If I hadn’t been swimming in so much pain already, the sudden cramp might have brought me to my knees.
I opened my mouth to scream if I had to, but there was no time. The world burst out into hypercolor, even more vivid than the superacute senses the gem gave me. At the same time, everything slowed down, my hip popping forward because always, in whip and stave work, it’s the hip that leads. Temporary deafness fraying at the edges as the whip stretched, blurring-fast, and the thing vomited through the hellmouth leaned back, its foot crushing against the wooden Lance as it shuddered on the altar’s top. Ash rose as the Lance twisted, bits of it grinding away finer and finer as the hellmouth chewed at its stored-up power.
The thing that had come through was an amorphous bipedal shape, silhouetted against the glow—hellbreed are like Elder Gods, they do not dress when they are at home, but when they come over into the physical they need some kind of shape. There’s a moment just as they’re coming through where you can glimpse their alienness, and it can drive you howlingly, gratefully insane.
But I was already halfway there, fury rising inside me. A chilling, glassy sound broke out of my mouth, burning my throat. Even through the deafness I heard it, like murder in a cold room at midnight, and we struck—the whip and I—at the same time, with physical and etheric force.
And we got his attention.
The world went white. Landing, hard, throwing up a sheet of juicy foul green and clods of oily black not-dirt, knocking over hellbreed like ninepins, the jolt snapping bones with sweet pain, blood bursting free in scarlet banners. The gem screamed on my wrist, and a shock ran through me from crown to feet as it tried to patch me up and get me fighting again. Everything tilted sideways, and something damp kissed my cheek.
Rain. It was rain. The roof was crumbling, concrete chunks falling with silent, eerie grace, smoke thinning as water fell from the sky and lightning flashed again and again.
They had come.
They shone, sliding down through the gaps in the dissolving roof like cosmic firemen, clarity glittering on their armor and their wings. No guns for them—they had swords and slender spears, bows and knives, chains and flails. They moved among the hellbreed, winnowing, and Hell’s scions were screaming in terror but still standing to fight.
They had no choice.
The clarity around the newcomers shone through the hellbreeds’ twisting, stripping off their masks and the rotten apple-bloom of damned beauty.
He landed next to me, his hair a furnace of gold and his blue eyes alight, and leaned down. The gem gave a heatless, massive twinge all through my broken bones. His hand closed around mine and he pulled as if I weighed less than nothing, hauling me to my feet.
“This is the help we can give!” Michael the Caretaker said. The words cut through the deafness, laid right in the center of my brain. I was so far gone I didn’t even feel a weary satisfaction at seeing the wings behind him, glorious white and feathered like a vulture’s, spread wide, glowing like the sun. “Human hands must end this!”
Oh, I’ll end it, I thought, and another cold, adrenaline-fueled little laugh burst out of me as Michael swung aside, his sword coming up with a sweet singing, cleaving the cringing air.
Perry fell back, snarling, and he had a sword of his own. Its blade was tarry black, drinking in the light, but I promptly shelved him as a problem and looked to find the badass who had just stepped through from Hell.
I’d settle Perry’s hash later. Still, if the caretaker wanted to save me the trouble, that was fine with me. I had other fish to kill.