Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel (25 page)

As the rain coursed down Ling’s face, she fought down the revulsion and horror moving inside of her. If she could just catch sight of Hank—she knew that if he was there, then Ren-Lei must be nearby. But all she could see was the shrieking, hissing demons and the weapons hacking at the dead army swarming relentlessly forward, from all sides of the square.

The storm worsened, its winds howling louder than the battle below, the clouds darkening to pitch-black. Bolts of lightning, larger than any Ling had ever seen, struck sizzling into the ground, each blinding flash silhouetting the demons and corpses that it sent flying through the air. By one such explosion, brighter than a noonday sun, she caught sight of another figure, a black man with matted dreadlocks flying above the shoulders of a grime-encrusted overcoat. Standing upon a mound of lifeless demons, he whirled a double-bladed spear so fast about himself that its edges formed a flaming, lethal helix, slashing apart the demons that hurled themselves toward him. The smoke from their corpses writhed darkly around him, obscuring him for a split second, before being ripped through by another blurring swing of his spear. One demon managed to elude the blades, its claws reaching toward the man’s throat, only to be caught by a windmilling kick to its chitin-armored groin. Yanking the spear free from the horned skull he had used as a pivot to launch himself in a flying spin, the man sprang swiftly forward, lifting one flaming blade up through the demon’s abdomen, then out through its throat as he pulled the spear’s shaft back toward himself. The gutted demon toppled down across the others as the weapon whirled about once more without ceasing.

Another radiant burst, not glaring white like the storm’s lightning, but eerily violet in color, caught her eye. She turned and saw a cabal of the Devil’s witches, their backs against the entrance to the tower, their hands outstretched before them. Incandescent bolts shot spiraling from their palms, scattering the corpses arrayed before them. But there were too many for even their combined magics to defeat; for every corpse whose limbs were blasted from its torso, more swarmed toward the witches, threatening to engulf them with their sheer numbers.

Past the backs of the dead, Ling spotted a face she recognized.
It’s her
—a fierce shock seared her spine as she saw the one who had passed herself off as a simple nanny, the one she had hired to take care of her baby. And the one who instead had given Ren-Lei to the hideous dwarf.

She dove into the thick of the battle, climbing across the heaped bodies of the slaughtered, shoving her way past the demons locked in hand-to-hand combat with the dead, dodging the blades of swords and spears, as she headed for the tower’s entrance.

By the time she had crossed the square, the corpses had toppled onto the coven, like a slowly cresting wave. Ling could see nothing but the backs of the dead, flashes of the violet light sliding past their intertwined bodies.

“Get back!” She grabbed the shoulder of the first one she could reach, tugging it from the pile and sending it sprawling behind herself. “Get away from them!”

She managed to claw her way through the dead, pushing each away from the rest. Until she could at last pull free one of the figures trapped beneath them.

Blood trickled from the mouth of the youngest witch, the one who had posed as Ren-Lei’s nanny. She glared up at Ling, her neck still marked from the earlier bite of a demon.

“Anna—” Ling gasped out the name, her heart racing as she grabbed the witch’s arm and yanked her to her feet. “Where’s Ren-Lei?” Desperate, she swung the back of her hand across the witch’s face, then again, sending blood spattering across Anna’s shoulder. “Tell me or I’ll kill you!”

“Let me go!” Anna struggled to free herself from Ling’s grasp. “I have to find my master!” A crazed spark appeared in the witch’s eyes. “And find a way—to give him more power—”

The corpses had finished off the other witches, leaving their broken bodies on the ground. They turned and stumbled back into the fight, leaving behind the two women.

Before Ling could react, a violet glow coalesced above Anna’s hands, then shot outward, striking her full in the face. She staggered backward, then fell.

Anna turned and ran for the tower’s entrance. With another blast from her hands, she cleared the corpses of the other witches from the entrance to the tower. The door shattered, its glistening shards raining across the ground. With a last mocking glance at Ling, the witch ran and disappeared into the darkness inside the building.

Ling knew she had no choice. The witch was her best, her only, option to find Ren-Lei at this point. She scrambled to her feet and ran after the other woman.

She found herself in the building’s lobby. Anna was already gone. Standing before the elevator doors, she watched as the red numbers mounted upward, finally stopping at the twentieth floor.

She’ll be waiting for me,
Ling realized, stopping herself before her hand could push the button for the next elevator.
I better be ready. For anything
 …

She ran over to the lobby’s reception desk and ripped out a length of telephone cord. She had learned a lot at the Mountain Master’s school; now was the time to use it. A heavy crystal paperweight lay on the desk; she quickly tied a monkey’s-fist knot around it, turning the cord into a makeshift rope dart.

With her weapon dangling in one hand, she pressed the elevator button. A few seconds later, she was traveling upward, ready for battle.

22.

The tide was turning. And not the way it was supposed to.

With reddened sweat running down his naked chest, the Devil had mounted to the top of a mound of his slaughtered followers, the better to survey the course of battle. As the rain continued pelting down, flashes of lightning illuminated a dismal scene inside the garden square. He scowled as he watched reanimated corpses, somehow called forth from the city’s tombs and graveyards, driving the struggle’s outcome. Individually, the dead were easy prey for his legions, bones flying apart with single blows from the demons’ weapons, blades severing the rotting flesh and tendons that had held the shambling forms together. But en masse, the sheer numbers of the dead prevailed. Cold, pallid hands dragged flying demons out of the night sky, skeletal fingers ripping apart the leathery wings. As warrior ants in far-off tropical hells could swarm over and bring down creatures hundreds of times their size, so did the moving corpses bury demons beneath their combined weight, until steaming blood spurted across the square’s paving stones.

From the Devil’s vantage point, the garden now appeared like the dumping grounds of some monstrous charnel house. The dismembered fragments of human remains, already far gone in decay, intertwined with the crushed and broken demons. Thick torrents of smoke churned upward from the demon’s bodies, rendering the battle between those who remained even more nightmarishly confused; maddened, the remaining demons struck and slashed blindly in all directions, impaling their own kind as often as they caught one of the walking dead on the points of the weapons. The bodies had mounded so high that clambering over the bloody remains was the only path from one side of the battlefield to the other.

“I grow weaker,” the Devil murmured darkly. His legions were so close to him, so much a part of his substance, that the death of each was like a knife-blow to his heart. To watch so many being slaughtered was to suffer a million fatal cuts. But even more infuriating was that he still didn’t know how this dead army had been summoned from their graves, and set against him and his followers. To have done so was to have wielded an awesome power—but who in the city possessed the strength to cast such a spell?

The answer came from behind him. A voice shouted: “You wanted an army—”

He whirled about and saw Death’s apprentice standing at the base of the mounded corpses.

“So I brought you one.” One sleeve of Nathaniel’s leather jacket was charred to tatters, revealing the equally blackened skin of his arm.

“How—” The Devil stared at him in shock. “I left you to rot in Hell.”

Nathaniel said nothing in response, simply smiled.

He could see the difference in the young man. Even with the injured arm, Nathaniel looked stronger than he had before, as if the powers he held had enlarged his muscles and bones, rendering him taller and more threatening. And not just that: he was no longer a mere boy, Death’s youthful apprentice. Something had matured him, turned him into a man. The eyes that gazed upon the Devil showed no fear or hesitation. Fear clenched cold inside the Devil’s gut, as if—for the first time—he was looking upon his own certain destruction.

Before he could speak, the cold grasp of the dead seized upon his legs, nearly toppling and dragging him from the top of the grisly mound on which he stood. Distracted by Nathaniel’s sudden appearance, the Devil hadn’t seen a half dozen of the dead coming up on the other side. A single sweep of his arm sent a churning fireball into their empty-eyed faces, scattering them in all directions.

But he knew he couldn’t get rid of the dead army until he had first taken care of Nathaniel. As long as Death’s apprentice was alive, his own survival was in question. Nathaniel had been the one who had raised the dead; they would keep coming, wave after wave of them, as long as his magic called them to battle.

The Devil closed his eyes and crossed his arms upon his chest. He summoned his own power, every fiery atom that his body held coalescing one by one with the others. Greater and greater, the scalding flames reached down into his groin and up into his throat. If he held that force a moment longer inside, it would consume him. Instead, the Devil flung his arms wide, unleashing a ball of radiant plasma, expanding wider than his own form, and flying straight at the insolent human standing before him.

The great fireball halted halfway between the Devil and the target at which he had aimed it. It hung there, the churning radiance that played across its curved surface wavering red-tinged shadows across the stacks of dismembered bodies.

Past the glowing sphere, he could see that Nathaniel had raised his good arm, holding his palm outward, halting the plasma in its course.

“How…” The Devil glared at him in mingled rage and wonder. “How can you do that…? There is no power on earth that can defeat me.”

“Think again…,” said Nathaniel. “Because the coldness of death brings an end to everything in time…” He gave a slow nod. “Including you.”

As the Devil watched, the fireball began to turn to ice. Its surface silvered over with hoarfrost, the radiance gradually dying inside. Its trail of fire, extending back to the Devil, froze as well. His eyes widened as he looked down and saw the ice forming around his hands, trapping them in a thick crystalline casing. But it didn’t stop; the ice grew, setting around his wrists and forearms.

The Devil’s response edged into panic. He frantically smashed one growing mass of ice against the other, trying to crack them into shattered crystals. A few whitened shards were chipped away, melting into steam as they arced through the fiery air. But the clear, unbroken ice grew larger, even as his attempts to free himself grew more desperate.

Within a few moments, his elbows would be frozen inside the encroaching ice. If he didn’t do something soon, find a way to break the spell that Nathaniel had hurled at him, his entire body would be encased motionless inside it. He struggled to break his arms free of the encroaching mass of ice—in vain. It had already grown too heavy, shackling him to the spot. Chest laboring for breath, he threw back his head.

“To my side!” The Devil’s voice cried out across the battlefield. He desperately looked about, seeking his followers. “Now!”

*   *   *

A ghastly peace had begun to settle upon the garden square.

The dead and dismembered outnumbered the living. The army of corpses, torn bone from bone by the demons’ weapons, lay motionless. The spell that had exhumed them, set them stumbling toward the fight, now seeped away in the rain pooling beneath the fragments of their bodies. Rivulets of blood, once hissing like steam, now clotted upon the shattered skulls and riven breastplates of the Devil’s legions.

“Two of these bastards left—” Blake looked over at Hank, standing a few yards away. “And you wouldn’t know it, they’re the worst.”

Hank rested the blade of his axe on the ground, as though he could draw strength from the earth through it, to replace even a little of what had been drained from his muscles. “I haven’t enjoyed any of ’em.” Behind him, the stack of scaly, armored bodies reached to the height of his head. He rested a hand on the helmet still strapped to his chest, taking a peek inside to make sure that Ren-Lei was still safe. “Let’s finish this.”

A resolution more easily made than accomplished. The demon that had come vaulting across the mounds of bodies to confront Blake dug the points of its claws into the mouths and eye sockets of the fallen. It had a face only partly human, the lower half formed into the curved, jagged-toothed mandibles of a giant carnivorous insect. Rearing upright, spreading wide its glistening, heavily muscled arms, the demon snarled with fury. The segmented armor of a scorpion tail arched over its back, the hooked stinger wide as a cart wheel and glittering with poison.

Facing Hank at the same time was the largest of all the demons that had burst from the confines of the earth’s depths. It towered above him, rearing erect on legs formed of massive, writhing snakes; the blood of its victims tangled the coarse mane of its lion’s head, shielded by a magnesium helmet heavier than any that its slaughtered comrades had borne. The creature tilted its head back, emitting a deafening roar, needing no words for its promise of death and retribution.

Blake and Hank drew closer, setting themselves back-to-back as the two demons approached. The giant scorpion lunged forward at Blake, the point of its stinger swooping at his chest. He parried it with the double-bladed spear in his hands, tilting to one side so that the venomed point passed within inches of his face. Its force was still enough that it penetrated Hank’s shoulder instead, the curved hook emerging just above his shoulder blade. The black ichor of the stinger’s toxin shot into the air and landed in a hissing spatter across the ground.