Hell's Heroes

KNIGHTS IN SLIMY ARMOR

Nothing but cobwebs. I whirl wildly as the others crash through after me, sure Lord Loss and his minions are hiding in the shadows. But we’re alone in a large, bare room. No time to wonder at that. I don’t know if the mobile pool can cross after us, but taking no chances, I cast a spell over the window, establishing a shield to block anything else from following.

“Where is he?” Shark growls, casting an uneasy eye around the room.

“I don’t know.” I try sensing the demon master’s presence, but I’ve never been good at that type of magic.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kirilli moans.

“Don’t be stupid,” I snap. “This is where we wanted to get to.”

“But it’s different now,” Kernel says, taking Kirilli’s side. “Lord Loss herded us here. It’s obviously part of a plan. We’d be crazy to go on.”

“That’s the way it always is,” I shrug. “Lord Loss sets a trap—I blunder into it and hope for the best. So far I’ve got the better of him. My luck’s bound to run out eventually, but there’s nothing else I can do. I don’t have the brains to outwit him, just the brawn and guts to fight back.”

“So you want to walk into his den and take things from there?” Kernel asks.

“Yeah,” I grin.

“That’s madness.”

“Maybe. But in my experience, the cleverer you are, the more ways you find to shoot yourself in the foot. Juni, Davida Haym, and Antoine Horwitzer were way smarter than me, and each set me up for an elaborate fall. But I’m here and they’re dead. Sometimes it pays to be simple.”

Kernel frowns. “In a strange way, that almost makes sense.”

“Stop talking!” Kirilli shrieks. “Get us out of here!”

“We’re not leaving,” I growl. “Kernel, how are those eyes coming along?”

“I reckon another ten minutes if we aren’t distracted.”

“Coolio.” I crack my knuckles. “We could wait here, but I think we’re better off taking the fight to them.”

“Knowing you as well as they do, that’s probably what Lord Loss and Bec are counting on,” Kernel warns me.

“Good. I’d hate to disappoint them. But there’s a personal matter I want to settle first.”

“What are you talking about?” Shark scowls.

“You’ll see,” I mutter, then head out of the room and set off through the castle that I’ve explored a few dozen times in my dreams.

Timas is intrigued by the webby mechanisms of the castle. If he had his way, we wouldn’t move on until he’d made a full study of each room. But I ignore his pleas to slow down and instead plow on until I find a corridor that I remember from my nightmarish meanderings with Bec and Lord Loss.

Once I’ve got my bearings, I pick up speed, leading the others through a series of corridors and rooms, down into the dungeon. We encounter none of Lord Loss’s familiars. That’s weird—this place should be packed with nasty little demons—but I’ve no time to worry about it. If I don’t do anything else right, there’s at least one wrong I’m determined to fix. It’s a minor matter in the grand scheme of things, but it’s important to me.

I’m nearing the door when Kernel stops and says, “Peekaboo!”

I face the bald teenager with the caramel-colored skin. His bright blue eyes are back in place, little flickers of light dancing across his pupils. He stares at the air around me, smiling widely.

“You can still see the lights?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” he breathes, extending a hand to caress an invisible patch. He parts his fingers and stares at me through the cracks. “This is where I say goodbye.” He says it warily, expecting me to argue.

I nod shortly, then jerk my head at the corridor ahead of us. “Around that bend is the door to a dungeon. Lots of humans are imprisoned there. Lord Loss tortures them in his spare time. I’m going to free them. Want to help?”

“You told me I could leave,” Kernel says guardedly.

“You can. But if you do and we fail, you’ll condemn these captives to suffer at the hands of Lord Loss, maybe for thousands of years.”

Kernel licks his lips and frowns. I almost have him.

“One of the prisoners is a girl called Bo Kooniart. She helped Dervish and me break out of Slawter. She could have left with us, but she went back to find her father. And her brother.” I smile crookedly at Kernel. “She risked all to save her brother. You and I know what that’s like, don’t we?”

Kernel nods unhappily.

“You can tell where Lord Loss and Bec are,” Shark says. “Search for them. Check if they’re waiting in the dungeon for us.”

Kernel studies the invisible lights for a few seconds. “They’re on one of the higher levels, at the center of the castle.”

“Then what are you scared of?” Shark grins.

Kernel glares at me. “One last favor, then I’m out of here. Agreed?”

“Do whatever the hell you want, baldy,” I sniff and press on, hiding my smile behind a bloodstained, hairy hand.

The door, like everything else, is made of cobwebs. It’s the only door we’ve encountered in the castle. Timas bends to study the hinges as it swings open. The rest of us move forward, me first, followed by Shark, Kernel, Kirilli, and Moe. We hear the victims before we spot them, low moans, pained weepings, soft cries for mercy and death.

We fan out and Kirilli edges ahead of the rest of us, eyes widening as he studies the humans strapped to the walls and tables, the implements of torture lying like toys across the floor and webby shelves.

“This is despicable!” he splutters.

A man with half a face lifts his head at the sound of Kirilli’s voice and stares at him through one eye. “Have you come to kill us?” he wheezes.

“We’ve come to save you,” Kirilli says, hurrying to his side.

The man sneers wearily. “Don’t make fun of me. Lord Loss sent you to give us false hope.”

“No, honestly,” Kirilli insists, “we’re here to—”

“Watch out overhead!” Timas shouts behind us.

I look up and spot a huge spider-shaped demon descending on a strand of web, fast as an eagle swooping on a rat. I lunge forward to protect Kirilli. Shark and Kernel react a split second later. But the furious stage magician doesn’t need our help. Neatly sidestepping us, he points a finger at the spider and screams a phrase of magic, unleashing twin lightning bolts from his eyes.

The bolts strike the spider and it explodes, showering us with goo and slime. As I spit out the mess and wipe it from my eyes, I stare at Kirilli. He’s standing rigid, finger still outstretched, features contorted with contempt.

“Nice work, Kovacs,” I murmur. “But next time, try not to splatter us. If you’d waited till it was lower, you could have killed it and spared us the splash-back.”

Kirilli blinks and stares at me, then realizes I’m joking and smiles tightly. “The way you smell, it wouldn’t make much difference,” he says.

“I’m liking you more and more,” I laugh, slapping his back. “Now, shall we free these poor devils and send them home?”

“Hell, yes.” Kirilli sets to work on the bonds imprisoning the skeptical half-faced man.

As the others dart about the dungeon, freeing the tormented humans, I hurry to the spot where Bo Kooniart has always been. My stomach lurches when I don’t find her—the shackles that held her in place lie open on the floor. I turn to the captured, blond-haired Disciple whom I saw every time I trailed Bec and Lord Loss here. His expression is torn between hope and disbelief.

“Bo—the girl who was here—where is she?”

He doesn’t respond, only stares, still not sure I’m real.

“The girl,” I growl, pushing my face up to his.

“You’re not… a demon,” he croaks. “But you’re not… human either. What… are you?”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m here to rescue you. But where’s the girl? Did Lord Loss…?” I don’t finish, not daring to voice my worst fears.

“Back… there,” the Disciple wheezes, nodding at a barred door behind me.

Hurrying to the bars, I spot Bo and two others chained to the floor. It’s a small room filled with insects made of fire. They slither slowly across the helpless captives, leaving small, flame-filled channels in their flesh. Bo is gagged—they all are—so she can’t scream, but I can see the pain and terror in her eyes.

Cursing, I rip the door off its hinges and toss it aside. Bursting into the room, I stamp on as many of the fiery insects as I can, then pull Bo and the others free and toss them out into the dungeon. Taking a deep breath, I blow on them, quenching the flames and killing the insects still burrowing across their chests, faces, and limbs. With a quick swipe of a claw, I cut the gags from their mouths. As they whimper and sob, I find clothes nearby and toss them to the naked prisoners. While they pull them on, I do what I can to heal their wounds. Then I turn to free more of the inmates.

“Wait,” Bo croaks. “I’ve seen you before, but I don’t know where.” Her voice is surprisingly strong for one who’s been through hell. Then again, remembering how she went back into the bedlam of Slawter to search for her father and brother, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.

“Grubbs Grady,” I grunt, letting my face change back to the way it was when she knew me.

Her eyes widen. “ Grubbs? What happened to you? You look like…”

“… something from the cast of Slawter, ” I grin.

“Is it a curse?” she asks. “Did the monsters do this to you?”

“Yeah,” I mutter. “Something like that.”

I help her to her feet. “Are you OK?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “It’s been so long… years… yet I don’t look old, do I?” She stares at her hands. Although they’re rough and scarred and stained with blood, they’re the hands of a girl, not an old crone.

“You look fine,” I tell her. “You’ll look even better once you’ve had a hot bath.”

Bo frowns. “A hot bath? Here?”

“No,” I say softly. “You’re going home.”

She starts to tremble. “Don’t say it, not if it isn’t true.”

“It’s true,” I promise, then shout, “Kernel, where’s that window?”

“Working on it,” he calls back.

“Another minute or two,” I tell her. “Then it will all be over.”

Except for the impending apocalypse, the voice of the Kah-Gash adds inside my head, but I ignore it.

“Abe?” Bo asks quietly. “My dad?”

“You haven’t seen them here?” She shakes her head. “Then they didn’t make it out of Slawter.”

Tears well in her eyes. “You’re sure? There’s nowhere else they might be?”

“No.”

She nods sorrowfully and I marvel at the strength of humans. Despite all that she’s suffered, her first thoughts are of her dead relatives. I thought I grew stronger when I became a wolfen beast, but in some ways maybe I lost more than I gained.

“It’s open,” Kernel calls, and ushers the first of the prisoners through a window of yellow light.

“Come with me,” I tell Bo and the others, leading them towards the window. “There’ll be people on the other side. They’ll help.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Bo asks.

“No.”

“He’ll find you if you stay,” she whispers. I don’t need to ask whom she means.

“He won’t have to. We’re going after him.”

“You think you can fight him?” She stares at me as if I’m mad.

“We’ll give it a good shot.”

She shakes her head wordlessly. Then we’re at the window. Before she can think of anything to say, I gently push her through. I don’t need thanks. It’s enough to see her to safety. A small, unimportant triumph—but to me, it matters a lot.

The prisoners continue filing through, but some are beyond help. A grim-faced Shark takes care of those, breaking their necks, freeing their souls swiftly and painlessly. Sometimes that’s the most you can do for a person.

The blond-haired Disciple pauses at the window and looks at us. “I should stay with you and fight,” he mutters. “It’s my job.”

“You wouldn’t be much good to us the state you’re in,” I say as kindly as I can.

“But I know how to do things.”

“You’ve done enough,” I smile. “Go home. Rest up. Recover. Take a long vacation. God knows, you’ve earned it.”

“Before I leave,” he says. “The war… who won?”

“Which war?” I frown.

“The World War.”

“One or Two?”

His face blanches. “There was a second?”

“Go home,” I tell him, insistent this time, feeling sorry for this confused man who’s going to have to learn to adapt to what’s left of life in the twenty-first century.

Soon they’re all gone or beyond the reaches of pain, and it’s just us in the dungeon. I look from Shark to Timas to Kirilli. “If you want to leave, I’ll understand. This is probably the end for anyone who pushes on with me.”

“Do we look like cowards?” Shark snorts.

“Well…” I was about to say Kirilli did, but one glance at his determined face and I button my lip. The time for mocking Kirilli Kovacs has passed. He’s truly one of us now. “Sorry. I guess I’ve seen too many movies. Let’s go.”

I start for the door.

“Aren’t you even going to say goodbye?” Kernel asks.

“Why?” I grunt. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“You said I could leave,” he snarls.

“You can,” I chuckle, “but you won’t. Walk out on a showdown with Lord Loss? Abandon us when there’s still hope we can beat this thing? Leave Bec to ruin the world, knowing you could maybe have stopped her if you tried? Nuh-uh. You’re going nowhere.”

Kernel grumbles darkly and I feel his scowl burning a hole in the back of my neck. But I know, as I step through the doorway, that he’ll follow. They all will. Hell, we’re heroes—this is what we do.