Hellforged

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WHEN I COULDN’T THINK OF ANYONE ELSE TO CALL ABOUT the concert, I tried Kane again—still no luck. I left a message at the Cross and Crow to let Mab know I was home. Then, I finally took my shower—long, steamy, and damn near scalding. Just what I needed. I lathered my hair four times, scrubbing the shampoo into my scalp, to make some progress with the Glitch spit. It would take a few days to eliminate all traces of the gunk. Shifting would get rid of it, but I didn’t have the energy. Anyway, I couldn’t shift now. I had work to do.
I toweled off, threw on my blue terry cloth bathrobe, and strapped Hellforged in its sheath onto my calf. The athame continued to lie quietly against my leg, with no sign of skittish-ness. Not so much as a flutter since I’d fought the Glitch on the plane. For now anyway, Hellforged seemed willing to work with me. And that was good, because we needed to practice.
I pulled on some sweats and went into the living room. There, I propped the HOME SWEET HOME slate against the sofa and stepped back to give myself room. I imagined myself standing on the lawn at Maenllyd, Mab watching. Just like I’d done there, I went through the ritual: Hellforged in my left hand, big circles, smaller circles to draw the Morfran toward me, then—as fast as I could manage it—a shift to my right hand. I hurled imaginary Morfran at the slate, shouting, “Parhau! Ireos! Mantrigo!”
There was obviously no loose Morfran floating around my apartment, because the slate didn’t jump and smoke. But I’d made it through the whole ritual without losing Hellforged or forgetting the words. Score one for Vicky.
I could almost hear Mab’s voice: What counts, child, is the final score when you’re dealing with an actual opponent.
I practiced the ritual until my arm ached. When my circles went lopsided and Hellforged felt like a heavy sword instead of a lightweight athame, I put the dagger back in its sheath and snapped it in place. We were getting along, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I stretched my shoulders and my triceps, then I headed into the kitchen and put some water on to boil. I went back to the bedroom to get the bag of no-dreaming tea Mab had given me. As I dug around in my bag, my hand brushed the leather binding of The Book of Utter Darkness. Revulsion shuddered through me, but I pulled out the book and set it on the bed. After a little more digging, I found the herbs. I carried them and the book to the kitchen.
The kettle shrieked and steamed. I turned off the burner, found a teapot, and got down a mug. It was Juliet’s favorite mug, black ceramic emblazoned with FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES in dripping red letters that were supposed to look like they were bleeding. Juliet never met a bad pun she didn’t like—probably a side effect of her Shakespeare obsession. I missed her. Wherever she was right now, I hoped it was far from the Old Ones.
I spooned tea into the pot and poured in the boiling water, then put the mug on the table and sat down. While the tea steeped, I’d try to coax the book into revealing something about how Pryce would attack. I opened it. The pages emitted a whiff of sulfur, and nausea clenched my stomach. I turned away and took three deep breaths, then bent over the book again, slowly turning pages until words formed in my mind.
As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his.
There it was—the latest prophecy, just as Mab had said. It seemed like a clear reference to tonight’s concert, although nothing about the damn book was ever clear. I needed more. I needed to know how Pryce would make his move. I stared at the page. Other words started to form, faint and undulating, like writing seen through water. I blanked my mind, and they took shape: From a goddess two lines diverged, but they are reunited in Victory.
Not that again. The words shimmered in my mind. There was something different about them this time, and it took me a minute to figure out what it was. The tense. Not shall be reunited, but are reunited. Why the change?
As soon as I asked the question, the words vanished from my thoughts. Nothing arose to take their place. My head hurt. I should drink the tea and go to bed. A few more minutes, and that’s exactly what I’d do.
I turned the page. My heart jumped like a startled rabbit, and I slapped my hand to my chest as if that would slow it down. No. God, no. There it was—the reason I’d never wanted to touch this book again, ever. On the night my father died, I’d taken down this book from its shelf in Mab’s library. I’d opened it at random. And I’d seen this picture.
The illustration showed Difethwr against a black background. The Destroyer grinned horribly, its evil teeth sticking out in all directions. Warts and pustules crowded its blue skin. Its eyes glowed, their flames held within. The image was hideous, repulsive, and I wondered why I’d ever felt compelled to mouth a few of the words on the page. But I had. And Difethwr had come.
There was no creature I hated more—in Uffern, the Ordinary, or the world in between.
Mab said the Destroyer was shadowing me. Was it here now? If I opened my senses to the demon plane, would it be sitting behind me, reading over my shoulder? Goose bumps prickled my skin; I could almost feel its fetid breath on my neck. As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his. That’s what the prophecy meant. Tonight, at the zombie concert, Difethwr would try to yank my soul away and hand me over to Pryce to become his demon-incubator.
How could I stop it? I stared at the picture of my enemy, searching for a clue. The Destroyer’s eyes brightened, then flickered. A blue-and-yellow electric shimmer crackled over the illustration, and Difethwr turned its head toward me. Something puffed from its mouth. A cloud of sulfur choked me. Exhaustion dragged at my mind like quicksand—I struggled to keep my eyes open. But I lost. My lids shut, and the quicksand sucked me under.
FOR A LONG TIME, THERE WAS NOTHING. NO SOUND, NO color, no movement, nothing but endless, limitless blackness. My body, my mind, time—everything—dissolved into dark emptiness.
Avagddu. Utter darkness.
I felt nothing. I thought nothing. I was nothing. There was nothing but the void.
Something changed, and it took a long time for my perception to pinpoint it. A dim light flickered, like a single candle in an adjacent room. A tiny spot of … something, a speck of ash maybe, coalesced in the glow. The spot grew larger, a dark kernel within the struggling light, darker even than the blackness that surrounded it. It kept growing. As it got bigger, the spot took shape—horned head, massive limbs. Fire glowed in its eye sockets, and it came forward as the Destroyer.
With the Hellion’s appearance, I knew myself again. But my body remained diffuse, its boundaries blurred and assimilated into the darkness. The flames behind Difethwr’s eyes provided the only light.
“Greetings, daughter of Ceridwen.” Difethwr’s voice sounded thick and bubbly. “It is the last time we will greet thee as such.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t greet me at all, Destroyer.” My own words had the same sludgy feel. I was surprised I could speak. I wasn’t sure where my lips were and couldn’t feel them moving. “I’d prefer you stay in Hell, where you belong.”
“Dost thou not yet understand? This is Hell. Uffern. Call it what thou wilt. Dost thou not feel at home? It is thy realm.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay topside.” I tried to sound defiant, but it was hard with my words glugging along, all slow and submerged.
Demonic, many-voiced laughter bubbled through the darkness. “It is too late. Thou hast made thy choice—in the slate mine, when thou didst open thyself to Uffern and we seized upon the bond. Then didst thou choose Hell, shapeshifter.”
“I don’t believe you.” Mab had said something about my bond with this Hellion. Something important. But here in the void I couldn’t catch hold of it.
“No matter. Thy destiny cannot be denied. And it is nearly at its fulfillment. Tonight, the Morfran shall feed. We demons shall regain our strength. And what must come to pass, shall come to pass.”
“I’ll stop it.”
“Thou?” Again the Hellion laughed, the chortles and chuckles percolating all around. “What canst thou do, fast asleep? One final time we needed thee as a bridge, so thou hast loosed the Morfran upon the dancing dead. Thou, shapeshifter.” Another laugh, but more distant. “Soon, we’ll not call thee that, either. Soon thou wilt bear the Brenin’s sons and serve him here in Hell.”
Difethwr’s eye-flames flared, then dimmed. As they grew fainter, so did the Hellion. It shrank and receded and finally disappeared, like a pebble dropped into a deep well.
The book had made me fall asleep—without Mab’s tea. I struggled to wake up, but my body wouldn’t respond. Sleep held me in a suffocating cocoon that wrapped around me like warm, wet cotton and wouldn’t let go. Wake up, damn it! I had to wake up. My mind pushed and strained at the darkness that held me captive, searching for a flaw, for any kind of crack or opening. There was nothing. I was sealed in a blank, undifferentiated prison of sleep.
There was no way to fight this. It was worse than any nightmare or teeth-gnashing demon. I knew I was asleep, but I couldn’t wake up. Mab would know what to do. I tried to call her, straining to conjure her in her library wing chair, but her colors refused to rise up. Darkness wouldn’t release them.
The Destroyer’s words replayed in my mind. One final time we needed thee as a bridge, and thou hast loosed the Morfran upon the dancing dead …
This was Pryce’s plan, to keep me out of the way. I would be stuck here, sleeping and useless, while Pryce strengthened his demon horde and the Morfran massacred hundreds of zombies at Tina’s concert.
Tina. The thought hit me like a lightning strike. Tina was the last zombie I’d spoken to before the book pulled me into sleep. She’d be the Morfran’s first victim when the sun went down. Maybe it was happening now; maybe it had already happened. Where I was, trapped in the embrace of Utter Darkness, time didn’t exist.
A vision emerged from the black-velvet void: Tina’s terrified face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth gaping in a scream, as the Morfran gouged her body. She’d be eaten. Pryce said the zombies were just food for the Morfran.