Hellhound

Page 57

Kane lay curled on his side. Smoke streamed from his body. His fur was gone, his flesh blackened. I wanted to feel for a pulse, but I was afraid my touch would be torture to his burned skin. I put my hand in front of his muzzle. No whisper of breath stirred. Carefully, I probed his neck. Almost too hot to touch, the skin crackled under my fingers. I couldn’t find any sign of life pulsing through his veins.
Kane.
She’d killed him. He’d tried to protect me, and she’d burned the life out of him for it.
Kane.
Gently, I lowered my lips to his face. The stench of burned meat filled my nostrils. I kissed him. My lips lingered on his hot, charred skin. Then I threw back my head and wailed out my pain and fury. Across the field, the hellhounds howled in reply.
I would kill her.
I would make the Night Hag suffer for what she’d done, and then I’d obliterate her from all the worlds.
Now was no time for restraint.
Difethwr had marked me. Now, Difethwr could lend me its power. Kane’s burned body lying before me, I called upon the Destroyer.
“Difethwr!” Rage gave me back the language that grief had turned into an inarticulate howl. “Destroyer! I invoke our bond. Help me crush my enemy!”
I quit trying to control my demon mark. Instead, I unleashed the torrents of my rage and channeled them straight into it. The mark heated, glowed red. A jet of flame flared out from it. My body blazing with hatred, I climbed to my feet.
I pulled the Destroyer’s power into me. The bones of my ankle knit themselves together. I stood tall, strong, ready to take my revenge. I sprinted in the direction the Night Hag had gone. My ankle strengthened and my wounds healed as I ran. My power swelled. The flame brightened, lighting up the stadium like someone had flipped on the floodlights. I kept my focus on the Night Hag. I could destroy her. I could destroy anything. I was the Destroyer.
There is another way.
The voice made me stumble, but I swatted it aside like a pesky gnat. There was only one way, and that was to destroy.
Destroy.
Ahead, I could see a crowd. Who was there, what they wanted, how they got in—I didn’t care. Sounds of fighting reached me. I welcomed them. I would add to their music, composing a symphony of pain and death, building it to a crescendo.
And then I would destroy the symphony. Rip up the score, smash the instruments, slaughter the players.
The Night Hag’s horse stood beside the crowd. The hag gazed skyward, her bow poised. She tracked a white falcon that soared overhead.
Mab?
The falcon dived into the crowd. Crows erupted into the sky. The crowd parted, and I glimpsed Mab in its midst, wielding a flaming sword, her face bloody. She was surrounded by zombies.
So the falcon wasn’t Mab. He was the real falcon, the white falcon of Hellsmoor, my father. The Night Hag would either capture him or kill him.
But not if I killed the hag first.
Help Mab.
The voice in my mind was imperious, not to be denied. Its words flamed with urgency and command. But my demon mark burned hotter. I raised my sword and charged the Night Hag.
My blade sliced into her arm. Her arrow flew in a low arc, missing the falcon.
The Night Hag’s face, a bare skull, spit gobs of fire at me.
Help Mab.
The voice nudged at my mind. I ignored it.
Mallt-y-Nos had nocked another arrow. She aimed at my face.
“Difethwr, help me!” I shouted. “Destroy her!”
There is another way. Let me in.
In an inferno of hellfire, the Destroyer itself appeared on the field. The Hellion was ten feet tall, more. It was massive, magnificent. For several long seconds it regarded me. Then it directed its eyeflames at the Night Hag’s horse. The animal screamed, then fell. Mallt-y-Nos jumped to the ground.
A cry arose from the fighting.
Help Mab.
Of course. I couldn’t kill the Night Hag with a bronze blade. But Difethwr could destroy anything. I’d let the Destroyer do its work. My aunt needed my help.
Mab was surrounded by half a dozen zombies. They reached for her, yelling, desperate to kill. Her flaming sword held them back, but she looked tired. If Mab’s reserves were low, I had what she needed.
Her bloodstone.
“Mab!” My aunt’s head snapped toward me. I raised the pendant. “I’ll throw it to you!”
I pulled. But the chain wouldn’t lift over my head.
No. You may not.
As Mab watched me, two zombies charged her, knocking her down. The entire crowd swarmed on top of her.
“Mab!”
The falcon zoomed down from the sky. Its talons tore into the topmost zombie, and a flock of Morfran shot into the sky. The falcon gave chase.
One zombie down. But there were too many others for Mab to handle.
I yanked at the pendant. It stayed put as though glued to my neck.
Let me in. I can save her.
“I’ll save her!” I shouted, not knowing whom I addressed.
Let me in. I will aid your friends and crush your enemies.
Who spoke? The Destroyer? A sharp yelp drew itself out into a long howl of pain, and I turned to see one of the Night Hag’s remaining hounds on its back, its stiff legs beating the air, as it rolled in flames that streamed from the Hellion’s eyes and hands. No, Difethwr was otherwise engaged. Its voice was not the one filling my head.
Then whose?
“Who are you?” I said aloud.
There’s no time. Let me in—now. Or Mab will die.
That did it. A bad idea? Probably. But I had no time to ponder the consequences.
“All right! I . . . I let you in.” Whoever the hell you are.
Mab’s pendant grew suddenly, unbearably hot in my hand. Before I could open my fingers to drop it, the bloodstone exploded into a million fragments.
My hand. Oh, God, my hand!
The explosion had blasted it clean off—I was sure of it. Below my elbow was nothing but pain. I couldn’t see through the blood and grit in my eyes.
The pain turned into a buzzing that raced up my arm and spread through my body. It was energy, but an energy stronger and more vital than I’d ever felt. I had the sensation of being borne high in the air, yet my feet remained on the ground. I could feel electric wires of power shoot through my soles and draw energy from the earth’s core. Energy that raised me, expanded me.
I flexed my electrified fingers. Good. They were still there. I wiped my eyes and looked at my hand. Glowing with golden light, it sparkled all the way up to the elbow, like I’d plunged it into a vat of glitter.
For the first time in ten years, I couldn’t see the Destroyer’s mark on my skin. The glitter covered it entirely.
“Victory!”
Mab’s half-strangled cry seemed to come from far below me. When I looked toward the sound, I saw with a double perspective—from my own height and at a bird’s-eye view of fifteen or twenty feet in the air. I shook my head to clear it, but the double perspective remained.
No time to worry about that. I had to save Mab.
A pile of zombies pinned her down. The reek of Morfran, hot and hungry and sulfurous, curled in my nostrils. Enraged, unappeasable cawing jarred my ears. If I could wrest out the Morfran, the zombies would lose their drive to kill.
And without knowing how I knew, I realized I could do it.
I stretched my hands—both glowing, one glittering—toward the zombies. I clenched both hands into fists, as though grasping handfuls of sand. Then, flinging my arms skyward, I opened my hands and shouted, “Ewch nawr!”
Go now. Why had the words come out in Welsh?
The sky blackened with crows. The white falcon shot like a meteor into their midst. From my higher perspective, I could see the excited, hungry gleam in his eyes.
On the ground, the zombies rolled away from Mab and staggered to their feet. Dazed, they wandered randomly or simply stood and stared.
Mab lay on her back. She was bleeding and bruised, but she was alive.
“Are you all—?” A fireball slammed into my chest. The ball was huge and dense, packed with intense energy. It should have killed me. It didn’t even make me stagger. My own energy field embraced the fireball, absorbed it. The light around me glowed brighter. My upper perspective soared higher.
Below, Pryce stood scowling between two zombies. A second fireball shimmered in his hands. “So it’s you after all,” he said and hurled the fireball at my face.
I wanted to duck, but my body refused. Instead, my hands raised themselves and caught the fireball. The energy ruptured into sparks that raced up my arms and fizzed through my body.
I was a pillar of fire, a column of lightning. My power reached for the sky.
Pryce angled his head and looked upward, twenty feet above my head but meeting my higher gaze. He backed away. “Difethwr!” he shouted. “Destroy her! Do it now and we’ve won!”
The Hellion stomped toward me, expanding as it came closer. It was ten feet tall, fifteen, twenty. Its steps shook the ground. I mustered the energy that buzzed through me, gathering it, focusing. I held it in my fingertips, ready to shoot.
Difethwr stopped ten feet in front of me. Somehow, I stood eye to eye with the giant demon. I looked directly into the hellfire smoldering behind its eyes and between its open jaws. I summoned more energy. The Destroyer’s hellflames brightened as it gathered its own strength.
This was it. One chance. Do or die.
I’d knock the Destroyer onto its Hellion ass. And then I’d blast that ass into oblivion.
I could do it. I knew. Just like I’d known I could somehow yank the Morfran out of those zombies.
I raised my arms, both of them. The demon mark no longer held me back. I pointed at Difethwr and summoned the energy that would obliterate the Hellion—forever this time.
Pain gripped my right forearm. My demon mark glowed red-hot through the glitter that coated my skin. Fire erupted from the mark, exploding and sparking like a Roman candle.
My arm lost its strength and dropped to my side.
Difethwr’s laughter brightened the flames that burned inside it and over its skin. I stared into the Hellion’s eyes and saw death.
“Get her, you stupid Hellion!” screamed Pryce. “You’re stronger!” Difethwr didn’t budge. Bellowing a battle cry, Pryce raised his sword and ran at me.