Spellbent (36 page)

I dodged another blow from Lake as I snatched up my helmet and slapped it back on my head. Relieved to be able to breathe again, I began to blink back through gemviews—and stopped on one of the strange, dark views that had made no sense to me before, but now that I looked around at Lake and the hallway through it, I realized I was seeing
inside
things, seeing the strange geometries that formed this place, and this place wasn’t a place at all, these walls weren’t made of wood, they weren’t made of
anything,
and giant King Lake with his ax was no more substantial than a doll made from dreams.

The Lake-doll swung his filmy ax at me again. I took a. deep breath and blew at him as hard as I could. He flickered like a candle flame and puffed out, wisping away like a bad smell, but my sword fell solidly to the floor at my feet.

I saw the sword now for what it was: an instrument of vengeance imbued with spilled magical energy from the Warlock’s death ritual and the power of a mother’s fear. My stone eye itched, and I blinked to the ghost-view. In the mirror of the blade, I saw Siobhan’s last rational act: She blessed the pendant and put it on Blue’s neck before he was taken to the basement, hoping it would save him, but her magic didn’t work as she’d hoped. Lake, to mock her and her failed spell, put it on the necks of the other babies he put into enchanted sleep, and then finally on the infant Warlock, perhaps intending to eventually give the pendant to his beloved firstborn son, if he intended anything at all.

My mind turned over everything I’d seen in the basement, letting the scenes flash before me like facets in a cursed gemstone. Reggie’s strange transformation, Cooper’s unrelenting anguish, Lake’s monstrous acts. . . and here in the hell, Blue’s demon and the adults’ compulsion to repeat the horrors of the past. I’d thought at first that Lake’s hateful spirit was the driving force in this dimension, that he was the one compelling the others to relive their worst experiences over and over. But now I realized Lake’s spirit was so degraded there was practically nothing left of it. He was just a shadow puppet, empty of soul or will, and perhaps he’d been one long before he died.

What, then, was the hand guiding Lake’s inhuman cruelty?

I blinked back to the architecture view and looked around me, seeing through the illusion of the walls. Cooper lay nearby, curled in a fetal ball, shivering in the throes of whatever nightmare plagued his senses. He was tormented and insensible, but solid and quite real. In the background were four child-like shapes, just as solid as he was: the enchanted brothers shining brightly, still alive. In the distance I saw three other spirits, weak and flickery: Corvus, Siobhan, and Reggie, dead but still with hope of escaping to the great beyond.

One of the child-shapes turned in my direction:

“Do you see?” It was Blue’s soft, papery voice.

I looked up past the hazy illusion of the house and saw the dark sponge-creatures swarming outside, solid and real.

“Where’s your mother?” I whispered to them.

Instinct told me to look down, and when I saw the grotesque monstrosity there, I almost jumped. A corpulent
thing
was lolling beneath the floor, a vast, flaccid version of the little monsters I’d seen at the window, a tooth-pored black sponge as big as the hell itself.

My brain finally dredged up information from the diabology class I dropped my freshman year. The huge creature was an algophage, a Goad, a thing that fed on negative spiritual energy, a parasitic devil that drove other creatures into violence and sadism. If the hell was a kind of web, the Goad was the fat spider right in the middle of it.

Siobhan’s wispy spirit flickered at me; she was trapped where she was, but it seemed that she was trying to get my attention. I blinked to the ghost-view. I saw Lake confront her over her lonely dalliance with Corvus, a lover’s argument simple and common as the hills. It should have just caused tears and angry words, a few resentful months the couple’s love could overcome. But the hungry Goad was in the woods nearby and felt their savory pain. It smelled the seed of darkness in Lake, tasted arrogance and a potential for hard violence he’d never acknowledged to himself, a potential the Goad could cultivate and exploit. I watched the Goad squeeze itself into a crack in the home’s foundation, creep up between the spaces in their walls, poisoning the air, damping their magic, infecting Lake’s brain with malignant madness.

“I see you,” I told the Goad, blinking back to the architectural view. “And I see what you’ve done. You can’t fool me anymore.”

The vast thing rippled, angry. “What do you want?”

“I want you to let these souls go.”

The Goad bucked beneath my feet as if it was trying to shake me off. “This is my hell. I made it! Get your own if you want one, mongrel!”

I did not flinch at its rage, nor wonder what it meant by its epithet. My mind, for once, was perfectly focused on what I knew I had to do. “Let them go, or I exterminate you and your children like the nasty little tapeworms you are.”

The Goad let out a noise that might have been a laugh. “Destroy
us?
Impossible.”

“Remember that I offered you mercy,” I said, snatching up Siobhan’s sword and slashing the point into the Goad’s body. It felt like cutting into greasy mud, and the Open wound steamed like a volcanic vent.

The Goad shrieked, and from the corner of my eye I saw its larvae diving down to protect their mother.

I pulled the sword from the gritty, oily flesh and swung it in a wide arc into the first wave of goadlets as I hammered others with my shield. The nasty little monsters popped like flies on a windshield. Slashing and swatting, I sidestepped through insubstantial walls across the bucking Goad to the spot where Cooper lay surrounded by his brothers. I’d killed enough of the larvae that the others were hanging back, hovering uncertainly. Apparently they weren’t quite as mindless as they’d first seemed.

“Honey,
wake up!”
I yelled at Cooper, as loud as I could. “I know it hurts, but you’re not a child anymore! It’s not
real
anymore! I need your help to get us out of here!”

His eyes opened slowly, glistening with tears. “I wanted them to live,” he whispered. “They’re still alive! Get up and hold on to me!” Cooper wasn’t immediately able to get up farther than onto his knees, but he reached out and grabbed my leg. I flung my shield into the thickest part of the larvae swarm and used both hands to drive the point of the sword deep into the Goad, carving the blade back and forth to try to get to the devil’s heart.

And I saw it: a red-orange lump of pulsing magma, a burning lava auricle. I grabbed Cooper’s wrist with my right hand as I plunged my left deep into the Goad’s heart.

The devil screamed as I plugged myself directly into the source of its dark power, and it hummed through me, stronger than a lightning strike. The monster had been feeding off human pain for thousands of years. I felt the spells the creature used to keep magic and the real world at bay, the spells that kept the hell running as a well-oiled agony factory. My stone eye showed me the devil’s machinations inside and out.

The stink of the Goad’s flesh and my burning dragonskin glove filled my nostrils. My heart-bound hand was in nerve-rending, fiery agony, but I knew I was no longer affected by the Goad’s magical suppression. No amount of physical pain could stop me now. I began to chant the ancient words to turn off the spells, one by one. The whole dimension wracked with tremors as it began to collapse.

Still chanting, I filtered the Goad’s power into Cooper. He sucked in his breath as the magical current coursed through him.

Figure it out,
I thought, hoping that on some level he could hear me.
Help your brothers. You can do it. You’ve lived your whole life needing to do this— don’t fail them now.

Cooper began to chant, a clear, powerful spell of life and love and forgiveness, a spell he could only have begun now that I was there to help and protect him. The brothers clustered close to him, drinking the power I fed him.

The goadlets suffocated and shriveled as the hell disintegrated around them. I dug my hand deeper into the flaming heart, simultaneously trying to crush it and suck the last of the power from the dying monster.

The vast bulk of the steaming Goad began to contract in on itself like a foul sun turning dwarf, growing hotter and hotter, the pain singing in my hand and arm more than I could imagine. It felt as if the devil’s heart was being crushed into my bones. I wasn’t sure I could draw my hand away even if I wanted to.

Cooper was drawing power fast, and so were the brothers, glowing children of light awakening and condensing into pale delicate flesh. He reached out to them, and they took hold of his arm.

I could see holes opening in the sky; the adult spirits wisped away to whatever lay beyond. Any moment now, the hell would collapse completely and we’d be crushed. Still gripping Cooper’s hand, I gave my trapped arm a mighty pull and finally jerked it free. I stuck my freed hand inside my dragonskin jacket and found one of the Warlock’s dirt-filled vials.

“Return!” I shouted as I snapped the glass.

Palimpsest: Easy as Peanut Butter

My jaws closed on Deputy Wilson’s neck; I gave the man a hard shake and felt his spine break with a satisfying crunch. I tossed Wilson’s body aside and stared up at Rosko astride the irritable firedrake. Rosko shrugged, gave me an exaggerated salute, and reined the drake away across the sky.

The Warlock lay trussed on the grass beside Mother Karen, Jimmy, and Ginger. Out across the field in the ruined basement, Oakbrown, Paulie, and Manette were reading scrolls to permanently close the portal. Jordan’s other man Bruce was running toward a brown Jeep partially hidden in the trees. I wondered if Bruce was going to call for reinforcements, or if he was going to teleport away and set off the VHDN bomb he’d left in the Warlock’s vehicle.

I couldn’t risk the bomb going off, but I also couldn’t risk the Talents shutting Jessie’s portal. I searched Wilson’s pockets until I found the handcuff keys, then loped over to the Warlock. The others stepped back, looking scared as I approached and freed Cooper’s brother from his bonds.

The Warlock unbuckled the ball gag and tossed it into the bushes, working his jaw and spitting on the grass. “Man, I never thought I’d be this glad to see a face as ugly as yours.”

I jabbed a clawed finger toward the basement, then tapped my wrist as if I were wearing a watch.

“Yeah. I’ll go stop them,” the Warlock said, seeming to understand my pantomime. “Karen, Jimmy, come with me—Jessie and Cooper will probably need your help if they can get back at all.”

“What should I do?” Ginger was staring at me, her voice a nervous quaver.

“Go with Spiderboy; he might need your help if any more of Jordan’s goon squad shows up. Just... try to be useful, okay?” The Warlock turned away from her and hurried across the dead field, hollering “Knock it off, guys, stop the spell!”

I loped back to the Warlock’s Land Rover and pulled out the VFIDN explosive Bruce had planted. The black metal eyeball weighed about three pounds and fit in the palm of my hand. It had no obvious seams or any apparent fuse that could be separated from the rest of the device.

Ginger ran up beside me. “Is that a bomb?”

I nodded.

“Can you defuse it?”

I made my best approximation of a shrug. It’s difficult if you don’t really have shoulders.

“Let me look,” she said, then blushed slightly. “I, um, made some of these in high school. Little ones, I mean. I had
nothing
to do with that nun who got blown up at the Catholic school across from my house—that was totally that Lautermilk kid’s fault. Uh. Sorry. I babble a little when I’m nervous. You’re, um, kinda big and scary and stuff.”

I put the bomb in her outstretched hands. Ginger bit her lip, frowning as she inspected the bomb’s smooth body. She ran her finger over one spot on the case that to me looked identical to every other spot on the case, and pressed. A fuse popped out of the pupil.

“See? Easy as peanut butter.” Ginger pulled the fuse out and tossed it into a nearby shrub.

Not sure how to thank her, I gave her a gentle pat on the head. I steeled myself to cross the dead field, and ran to join the Warlock and the others at the basement. Halfway across, I felt the ground ripple, the air turn icy. The door to Cooper’s hell was opening; I hoped that meant that Jessie was coming back.

Jessie’s Return

The return through the portal was fast and brutal. One moment I was crushed against Cooper at the heart of a roaring cold vortex, and the next I was flung forward onto my hands and knees on the dirty concrete floor. For one brief, wonderful moment, I thought my left hand had been magically restored. Then dead leaves smoked and caught flame around my fingers, and in the same moment my hand and forearm burst into a bright lava glow, the glow of the slain devil’s heart.

I rocked back onto my knees. My left was looking less and less like a hand, the fingers subliming into twisting tongues of red and purple plasma. The arm of my dragonskin jacket had retreated to the scarred stump where my true flesh began, but the cuff was smoking, my flesh blackening. There wasn’t any pain, not really, but a strong buzzing heat was moving through me, and every heartbeat sent a dark tormented flash through my mind, an image of the evil the Goad had wrought upon its countless victims in the hundreds of hells it had nested in and sucked dry.