Chapter 39 Malachi
Malachi
The universe, as a rule, abhors a vacuum.
I, however, abhor the sudden, cacophonous absence of my little summoner with a hatred that defies the laws of thermodynamics.
One second, she was warm, solid matter—a chaotic collection of soft skin, grief, and that maddening scent of peaches. The next, the contract ended, taking blood-bind and her with it.
The air in the room rushes in to fill the Eden-shaped hole with a force that rivals a bomb detonation.
The screams and wails of the Grey Archives are overwritten by a swirling blizzard of parchment and rags of clothes.
Overhead, the fluorescent tubes shatter in unison, raining glass down on us like confetti.
“Secure him!” Veraxia’s voice cracks under the sudden drop in atmospheric pressure.
I’m pinned to the ground by two guards. The one on my left has a knee in my kidney; the one on my right is wrenching my arm behind my back at an angle that has my shoulder burning.
“Get off me,” I snarl.
“Do not struggle!” the guard on the right grunts, tightening his grip. “By order of the High Council, you are—”
“You’re boring me,” I interrupt.
Then I snap my head back, introducing the base of my skull to his nasal cartilage with a sickening crunch.
He howls, his grip faltering as blood sprays across the metal.
One down.
The guard on the right hesitates. I pivot, using his own momentum against him, and drive the heel of my boot into the side of his knee. The joint gives way with a wet pop, and he goes down howling.
My sister stands ten feet away, her eyes wide, hair whipping around her face in the artificial gale as I scramble to my feet.
“Malachi!” she barks. “Do not make this worse! You are already facing a century in the sensory deprivation tanks!”
“A century of silence sounds like a vacation compared to listening to you,” I retort, backing toward the double doors.
I jam two fingers into my mouth and let out a piercing whistle.
Come on, you oversized mutt.
“Seal the exits!” Veraxia screeches. Do not let him breach the perimeter!”
My boots slam against the floor as I sprint through the pens, red strobe lights pulsing overhead, sirens wailing. Dozens of guards tear after me, swarming like ants whose hill has been kicked over, desperate to protect their procedures and precious paperwork.
“Stop!” one of them roars.
“No, thank you,” I call back, not bothering to look over my shoulder as I burst through the double doors, tearing through the waiting room of sinners, ignoring their collective gasps as I scatter them like dry husks.
I hit the exit and stumble out into the blinding grey glare of the ash-dunes.
There. The very same tram Eden and I jumped from, sitting idling on the tracks, the engine humming, the door torn off. It’s fast. It’s heavily armored. And, if memory serves, it has a direct line to exactly where I need to go.
“Perfect,” I mutter, adjusting my tunic as Chain-Chewer trots up behind me. “I always did enjoy a scenic drive.”
With a loud grunt, I wrench the cockpit door open, startling the pink-skinned Warden who’s halfway through a sandwich, mandibles clacking.
He looks up at me, blinking rapidly. “This is a restricted vehi—”
“Your shift is over,” I inform him.
I grab him by the scruff of his collar and the seat of his trousers and hurl him onto the ash. He bounces once, squeaking indignantly, before rolling to a stop at the feet of the charging mob.
Chain-Chewer launches himself into the cab beside me, his claws clamouring against the metal floorboards.
There’s no lock—because why would the Bureaucracy imagine anyone would steal from them?—so I grab a fire-suppression canister from the wall and jam it between the door handle and the driver’s console.
A fist slams against the reinforced glass next to my head. Then another. Then another.
“Do you mind?” I snap, ignoring the muffled shouts of ‘Cease!’ and ‘Halt!’. “I am attempting to concentrate.”
The control panel is a nightmare of blinking lights, rusted levers, and dials that seem to measure everything from ‘Steam Pressure’ to ‘Moral Decay.’ I stare at it for a singular, silent second.
I’ve jumped the Veil illegally, fought multiple demons, and successfully ordered food on the mortal realm.
Surely, I can drive a glorified train.
I yank the lever back, but nothing happens.
“Ah. Perhaps the other way,” I correct myself, and shove the lever forward.
The engine roars to life and the entire cabin lurches to the left, throwing me against the dashboard and sending Chain-Chewer sliding into the footwell with a confused yelp.
“Minor calibration error!” I shout over the grinding noise, wrestling the steering yoke as the transport bucks like a dying horse.
The wheels howl, finding traction on the rails, and we’re moving with terrifying, neck-snapping velocity. The guards hanging onto the side of the cabin are peeled away by the wind, their shouts receding rapidly into the distance as we tear away.
Fucking yes.
The speedometer’s red-lining, the needle vibrating so hard it’s blurring, but I shove the throttle forward anyway. The machine groans in protest, but I don't care. If the engine explodes, I will simply outrun the blast radius.
Ahead, the track splits into a labyrinth of converging lines. A lumbering cargo tram is chugging along the main artery, directly in my path.
"Move," I snarl at the windshield, as if the driver can hear me over the roar of my own stupidity. "Move, you rusted heap of scrap!"
It doesn't move.
"Hold on!" I shout as I yank the steering yoke hard to the left.
The transport tilts on two wheels, defying gravity and logic in equal measure, before slamming down onto the parallel track with a bone-shattering clang.
We bypass the cargo tram with inches to spare, close enough that I can see the terrified widening of the other driver's eyes as we streak past in a blur of black steel and sparks.
Adrenaline floods my system, a wonderful chemical spike that usually makes me feel invincible. But today, it just tastes like ash. Because beneath the roar of the engine and the grinding of the rails, there is silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
Eden. My little summoner. My brave, foolish, mortal. She’s been ripped out of my orbit and spat back into a world that doesn’t deserve her. Alone.
It feels like I’ve had a limb torn off, and my brain is still frantically sending signals to a hand that isn’t there. I grit my teeth, knuckles turning white on the yoke as a wave of nausea rolls through me—not from the motion, but from the void.
I shove the throttle forward, demanding more speed, trying to outrun the quiet. If I go fast enough, maybe the roar of the wind will drown out the fact that she’s in another dimension without me.
For two hours, the landscape blurs—obsidian cliffs, rivers of slag, the infinite grey wasteland, then the neon districts all bleeding into a single streak of motion. Until we finally enter the smog-choked sprawl of the Central Hub.
It’s the rush hour of the damned. The sky’s clogged with ash, and the streets below are a teeming, writhing mass of demons shuffling to and from their shifts. And I am approaching it at the speed of a falling meteor.
“Brakes,” I mutter, scanning the console through the haze of smoke filling the cabin. “Where are the brakes?”
I see a red lever. It looks important. I yank it.
It’s not the brake. It is, apparently, the horn.
A deafening blast of noise erupts from the transport, scattering the few demons foolish enough to be walking near the tracks, but our velocity remains entirely unchanged. Ahead, the track ends in a tangled congestion of stationary trams and a very solid-looking concrete buffer.
“Hold on,” I command Chain-Chewer.
I abandon the controls, grab the beast by his rocky scruff, brace my boots against the dashboard, and wrap my body around his as best as I can to shield him from the incoming slam.
We hit the blockade.
Metal shrieks as it crumples. The world flips upside down, then sideways, then dissolves into a fractured kaleidoscope of shattering glass and steel.
We plow through the rear car of a stationary cargo train, shearing it in half, before the transport finally, mercifully, grinds to a halt in a cloud of dust and steam.
The remnants of the cockpit door clatter onto the platform as I kick the door off its hinges. I stumble out, coughing as the smoke clears. My equilibrium’s shattered. My ears are ringing with a high-pitched whine. But I’m moving.
The Hellhound shakes himself free from a pile of twisted rebar, sneezing ash, and trots to my side, looking entirely unbothered.
Around us, the Central Hub has ground to a halt. Hundreds of demons—horned, scaled, and suited—are staring at me.
I don't look back at the carnage. I don't check for injuries. But my eyes lock onto the dark, crumbling skyline to the east. My boots slam against the cracked pavement as I break into a run, veering into the labyrinth of the back alleys, leaving the chaos of the main thoroughfare behind.
My lungs burn with each rattling inhale of rotting meat and rust. Chain-Chewer’s matching my pace, his claws skittering on the slick stones, but even he looks winded.
We skid around a final, garbage-strewn corner unit I reach the door I’m looking for, and hammer my fist against it.
“Open up!” I roar, my voice echoing off the damp brick walls.
A latch clicks, then a bolt slides back with a slow groan. The door swings open, revealing a slice of warm, yellow light that smells of dried herbs and tea.
“Malachi? You look dreadful.”
I brace a hand against the doorframe, chest heaving, fighting to keep my voice level.
“Litha,” I rasp. “I need the House-Beast. Now.”
She tuts, ushering me inside with a flap of her floral sleeve. “Come in, come in. Mind the doilies.”
I stumble into her human-junk house, and Chain-Chewer squeezes in behind me.