Devil Without a Cause (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

T
he Canyons of Despair were well named, for it was a place of emptiness and desolation. Wind-scoured rocks the color of rust, deeply scored with dry gullies, several yards wide and hundreds of feet deep. No life, no movement, only the howl of wind, rising and falling like the moans of a thousand souls, lost in misery and anguish.

Even Sammy, standing on a cliff top looking down over the canyons, felt the hopelessness the sound of the wind evoked. How to find one small boy—or the remains of one—in such a place?

He hadn’t let himself think about why he even bothered. If he cared to delve deep enough into his own psyche—which he didn’t—he knew it had something to do with the anger he felt over his own fate. The Heavenly Father who had supposedly known and loved him had turned his back and left him to make his own way in the wilderness, and he would not do the same to his own son, even though he’d never laid eyes on him, for to do that would make him no better than the One. There was nothing sentimental or maudlin about his decision; a human would probably be grieving the loss of what might have been, but he was neither human nor divine, and made his own rules.

The boy was merely a loose end, which needed to be tied up.

“Perhaps we should’ve brought the hellhound,” said Nyx, at his shoulder.

Sammy shook his head, his eyes scanning the barren landscape. “The boy lived among the imps. The scent of brimstone would’ve wiped out any trace of his life above ground, leaving nothing for Ajax to track.” He turned his face to the underground sky, sullen and gray with ashen clouds. “Besides, I don’t want to lose the hound to the Basilisk.”

“Where to begin?” Nyx asked. “Shall I take to the air? The boy’s remains could be in any of these gullies.”

Sammy ignored the familiar pinprick of jealousy over the fact that his second-in-command could fly, while he could not. “Yes,” he answered shortly, “and pay particular attention to areas of shadow. Ashtaroth specifically mentioned the shadows as a hiding place.”

He watched as Nyx spread his night black wings and launched himself into the air with one powerful, pistonlike thrust of his legs. In flight, the Soul Eater was a thing of macabre beauty, a silent reaper, a supernatural raptor who glided above the canyons without a sound.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil . . .

King David was a fool, who obviously knew not of what he spoke. If he’d seen Nyx—wings outspread, eyes glowing—his biblical royal bowels would’ve turned to water.

Sammy’s reflections were interrupted by a familiar little
chirrup
from the rocks to his right. Turning toward the sound, he smiled. “Ichor,” he said, “I thought I might find you here.”

The yellow lizardlike creature slipped from beneath the shadow of a flat rock, and scurried to his master’s feet. Yellow-green eyes, full of reptilian intelligence, peered up at him from the dusty ground.

In an instant Sammy knew what he must do. Let Nyx seek the boy, while he would seek much larger prey, one who knew well how to hunt within these dry and barren canyons. Predators often took their prey to their private lairs, to be consumed at leisure; it was as good a starting place as any.

“Clever little creature, aren’t you,” Sammy crooned, crouching to scratch Ichor beneath his scaly chin. “Tell me, where would a giant lizard like your cousin the Basilisk be found?”

Ichor
chirruped
an answer, half closing his eyes in bliss at the touch of his master’s hand. As Sammy straightened, he roused his lizardly self and scurried away, clearly confident he would be followed.

And followed he was, through a narrow defile between high rocks, across a dry creek bed and over ridges made of stone. The terrain was treacherous, but Sammy welcomed the challenge, his hobnailed boots made for hiking, the physical exertion helping to ease the turmoil in his mind; turmoil he’d been unable to quiet since Persephone’s casual mention of a son. The certainty with which he ruled his Underground world had been rocked, and he didn’t like the feeling.

With knowledge came power, and he wasn’t about to give up one iota of his. He’d find out what had happened to the boy before anyone else did and regain the advantage, and with it, his equilibrium.

Following the agile little lizard, he soon found himself at the opening of a large cave, overhung with stones that looked as though they’d been stacked there by the hand of a giant.

Ichor, at his feet, looked up at him without making a sound, and it was this that warned Sammy that the Basilisk was near. With a flick of his fingers, he dismissed his pet lizard, who vanished beneath a rock as though he’d never been. Then, armed only with his power and his wits, Sammy stepped boldly toward the cave.

“Ho, there!” he shouted, knowing himself safe. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

A slithering sound, scales against rock, was his answer. The Basilisk was his own creation, and he’d dealt with it before. An experiment gone slightly awry, if truth were told, for the creature’s very nature had been its undoing; its stare rendered its victims completely immobile, and what fun was there in that? He’d created it during the Greek era, when legend and mythos had reigned supreme, but found he preferred to watch his victims squirm on the pyre of their own guilt and evil ambitions, not seek heroic death during some pointless, supposedly glorious adventure. It always ended so predictably: grown men, reduced to helpless deer in the headlights. He’d become bored with the creature long since, loosing it into the canyons a millennium ago and leaving it to its own devices.

Now it slithered its way from the cave like the monster it was: half lizard, half snake, with the fully maned head of a lion. Its face was not feline, but avian, sharp-beaked as an eagle, with the piercing, pitiless eyes of a hawk. Two-legged instead of four, using sharp claws to drag its long, snakelike body forward over the hard-baked ground and out of the cave.

“Long time no see,” Sammy said lightly, knowing the creature had no idea what he was saying. “Eaten any small children lately?”

The Basilisk cocked its head, its great golden eyes staring him down. Its beak opened, and raucous sound emerged, somewhere between a squawk and a roar. The coarse hair of its mane stood on end in a fierce display, clearly designed to intimidate.

Knowing himself immune to the hypnotic quality of the beast’s gaze, Sammy merely cocked his head in return and stood his ground.

In a flash, the Basilisk lunged, beak snapping.

Twenty yards away from where he’d stood just a second before, Sammy laughed as the beak snapped closed on empty air. “Yoo-hoo,” he said, lifting the middle finger of his right hand in an obscene gesture. “I’m over here.”

Another raucous croak issued forth from the creature’s throat, this time tinged with rage. It gathered its lower body into a snakelike coil, obviously readying itself for another spring.

His plan was to draw the creature away from its den so he could search it without distraction, but the plan was momentarily interrupted as a clatter arose in the rocks above the cave, drawing the beast’s attention. Its head swiveled sharply toward the sound, and one of the rocks—much to Sammy’s amusement—tumbled down the incline to strike the Basilisk squarely on the head.

It flinched, blinking owlishly, only to flinch again as a second rock hit it, much closer to one of its eyes. A third rock struck it in quick succession, and it was then that Sammy realized that the rocks weren’t falling: they were being
thrown
.

“Hey, blondie!” came a shout. “What are you, an idiot? Get the hell away from that thing!”

Sammy, for the second time in less than an hour, found himself at a momentary loss for words.

The Basilisk, hearing the taunting voice, immediately began a pursuit, despite the hail of rocks that were now showering down on it.

“You! Yeah, you! Have you forgotten how to run? Put one foot in front of the other, and do it fast!” The voice was now coming from a different direction, echoing off the high canyon walls. “I can’t keep it distracted forever, you know!”

Sammy caught a quick glimpse of movement, high and to his right. A dark head, ducking behind a boulder. “Yo, pretty boy! Move it!” A wiry arm, gray with ash, was outlined against the sky just for a moment, as another rock sailed through the air.

An imp, likely one of the trackers who’d been sent after the boy, and obviously ignorant of the fact that the man he insulted was no ordinary man.

Sammy narrowed his eyes and stayed put, watching as the Basilisk clawed its way lithely up the side of the canyon in pursuit of its rock-throwing prey.

He caught the flash of movement again, and his suspicions were confirmed by the next shouted insult. “What’s it gonna take, meat sack . . . a burning brand up your butt? Get the hell out of here!”

If he’d been in a laughing mood, he would’ve been amused by the imp’s cheekiness. Curse and stones continued to rain down, and as he watched the Basilisk climb, he grew thoughtful—imps were hardly known for their good deeds, and it was a measure of how lax Thamuz’s rule had obviously become if one sought to save a stranger from the Basilisk. It should’ve been cheering the beast on, not drawing it away.

A dark shadow passed overhead; Nyx, scanning the area over which he stood. Sammy knew the instant he saw the imp, for Nyx’s eyes glowed a brighter shade of red as he banked, flying in a tight circle. The Basilisk saw nothing except that which it was focused on, which was the small dark-haired form scampering among the rocks, continuing to shout and throw stones.

“Shit for brains!” the imp yelled, and Sammy wasn’t certain whether that particular insult was meant for him, or the lizard.

It hardly mattered, though, as with a flick of his wrist and the point of a finger, he sent Nyx plummeting toward the impudent little beast who’d interfered with his plans. A moment later, there was both a startled squeal and an outraged roar as both the imp and the Basilisk registered Nyx’s sudden snatch-and-grab. His great black wings flapped as he gained altitude, clutching the struggling imp with both hands, leaving the Basilisk to screech angrily at the unexpected loss of its prey. Obviously unwilling to give up its dinner, and too stupid to know that it would never catch Nyx, it took off in the same direction, and disappeared over a ridge.

Take the imp back to the temple, and chain it
, Sammy told Nyx silently, within his mind.
I’ll deal with it later.

He would make an example of it, along with Thamuz. Imps had but one job, which was to torment lost souls, not save them. For that, and for failing to recognize its own master, it would pay.

The Basilisk, its screeching growing farther and farther away, had obviously forgotten him, so Samael the Fallen walked on silent feet into the lizard’s den, where he found nothing but ancient armor, rusted swords, and broken lances, remnants of long-ago days and the foolish mortals who’d once owned them. No fresh bones, no bloodstains; the boy wasn’t here, and never had been. A few greenish-yellow marks showed where some of Ichor’s brethren had met their demise, but nothing to help him in his search for the boy.

Undaunted, he went back outside to resume his search, looking first under the rock where Ichor had disappeared. His old friend was still there, safe in the shade.

“Well?” he asked the lizard. “What of you? Have
you
seen a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy anywhere in these canyons?”

Ichor shook his reptilian head in a clear negative.

Sammy sighed, looking up at the ashen-colored sky, scudded with clouds. It would take Nyx some time to return, so for now he was on his own.

“Gather your people,” he told Ichor. “Ask each and every one of them if they’ve seen any sign of him, and report back to me.”

Ichor scurried away to do his bidding as Sammy rose, and began his search anew.

“D
amn those imps!” he snarled savagely to Nyx, several hours later. “How could they have lost him?”

The search of the canyons had been fruitless. Now, several hours later, having bathed the dust of the place from his face and body, Samael the Fallen was absolutely furious. He strode up and down the marble floors of the inner temple, having had no luck soothing his temper with any of the objects that normally eased his eye and magnified his powers.

The All-Seeing Eye of Horus saw nothing, the Chalice of Caradoc reflected only the face he saw every day in the mirror, and Stone of Clarity remained opaque.

All these magical treasures, hoarded and used only for his own benefit through the centuries, now benefited him nothing.

“If there is anything left of the boy, Ichor’s people will find it,” Nyx asserted stoutly. “They will scour every inch of the canyons, including cracks and crevices where we could never fit.”

“I should
not
have to rely upon reptiles,” Sammy answered tersely, tossing the Stone of Clarity back onto the pile of treasure that filled one corner of the room. “The imps were charged with his care, and even though I knew nothing of Selene’s original plan, they failed in their efforts, and have thus failed me. Fetch the one we caught in the canyon.”

Heads were going to roll, and he would start with the one who’d dared call him pretty boy.

A few moments later, Nyx reappeared, grasping a struggling, swearing imp. “Think you’re tough, do you?” it screeched, doing its best to squirm from Nyx’s hold. “You look like a flying monkey from
The Wizard of Oz
, minus the uniform!”

Sammy, who’d seated himself in a golden chair that had once been the throne of an ancient prince of Crete, looked up sharply at that, wondering how in Hades an imp would know anything about modern-day cinema.

“Shut up,” he told the imp harshly, unwilling to listen to any more of its screeching. “Abase yourself before me.”

The imp, whom Nyx had abruptly released at the sound of Sammy’s voice, straightened itself to its full height, which was somewhere in the area of Nyx’s waist. Brushing its sooty arms in an exaggerated manner, as though brushing off dirt, it shot the soul eater a nasty look before turning toward the throne.