CHAPTER SEVEN
Hero was in trouble. She truly hadn’t expected to confront a full complement of hellhounds when she’d opened the Gate, and the shock threw her for a moment, so focused had she been on catching the dead girl’s shade.
She refused to let another soul get eaten .
Not on her watch. Never mind that the thing which had done the eating made her stomach flutter.
It wasn’t fear – not really; fear was an emotion she’d long since abandoned.
Getting one’s eyes gouged out on a regular basis made for a strong constitution.
So here in this place, surrounded by holy sisters of the Order of the Shield and a bastion of innocent children, she’d felt nothing but eagerness. Catching such a recently departed soul should have been a simple task: fresh corpse, newly dead – perfect.
What a fool she’d been to be so complacent! She should have paid more attention to her twisty innards. Something quite powerful was at play here. Even at the best of times, the Underworld was dangerous, a place of fire and rot and hidden traps – especially for her, a living being, only half demon.
Naturally, when she rushed, she landed in the hottest of water.
Individually, hellhounds were no worse than large, rabid dogs.
In a pack, hot for blood, they were something else entirely.
Luckily, she was still on edge after her earlier failure, keyed up and tense and braced for a new disaster, and she reacted with preternatural instincts, spinning out of reach of slavering jaws, and attempted to slam the Gate shut behind her.
But the hounds burst through, dragging Hell with them.
She slammed back into her physical self, cross-legged on the ground, and rolled to her feet in sulfurous mist. Her Sight blurred as the two planes of existence merged, one calm and full of confused nuns, neat brick pathways and crushed gravel, the other fiery and grim and rife with slavering hounds.
Hero bounded in great leaps up the clock tower – simultaneously a crumbling, decrepit facade and a solid brick edifice – fingers and toes smashing into the wall for purchase, leaving burning divots behind her as she climbed.
The unnatural creatures pursued her, leaping and snarling.
Her half-demon flesh was particularly delicious to a hellhound.
“Goddess burn me!” she cursed as one of the beasts snapped at her heel.
She kicked it, sending the lean, black-coated monster tumbling to the courtyard.
The few nuns remaining on the scene didn’t seem perturbed as the dead dog exploded into bits of rancid flesh practically at their feet; their eyes were on her while she clung to the tower like a madwoman.
She hissed and launched herself backward off the bricks, executing a perfect flip to land lightly on her feet behind the snarling pack and in front of the two disapproving nuns.
“Have you quite lost your mind?” the pudgy revered mother asked her, outraged at her antics. The other nun stared at her white-faced and shrank back when Hero turned on both of them with a snarl.
“Get out of here!” she roared, whipping her slim sword free of its ebony sheath. She clonked a charging hound on the head with the cane half of her weapon, spilling its brains before it could rip into the clueless nun. “You’re in grave danger, you stupid hags!”
Spinning, she sliced through another of the creatures and black blood splattered the paving stones.
This, at least, the nuns could see, even if it appeared as sparkling effluvium.
The revered mother spat a prayer like a curse and her colleague ran screaming.
It took only a heartbeat for the mother to follow her.
Good. No chance for casualties now, even accidental ones should her blade strike askance.
“Me? Kill a nun?” she muttered, already leaping and twisting her tall, angular frame away from savage fangs and claws. Her scapular flared and twirled around her, whipping at the beasts, and her voluminous pants caught more than a few of her attackers’ claws, saving her skin from damage.
She managed to kill three more of the miserable beasts, bouncing around the courtyard and drawing even more of Hell through in the process.
Not her best work, really, but it couldn’t be helped.
She caught sight of a pale shade among the flames and chaos, weaving through the hellhounds and random stalagmites sprung from nothingness.
“You!” she screamed, trying to draw its attention. Even a half-human voice attracted a spirit – so unexpected in Hell, where demons reigned supreme. “Cassandra Graham! I am here for you!”
The pale form wavered, began to coalesce.
Hero felt a swelling of relief and fought her way through the ravenous dogs to reach the spirit of the dead girl.
Her silver sword, a bright needle of destruction, tore through the hellhounds like scissors through paper.
But they kept coming, determined. They did not want her to reach the shade!
“Sorry, bastards. Not today.”
She was close to the glimmering soul. It was watching her with luminous eyes. The dogs swarmed, howling and snapping, barely kept at bay by the devastating sweep of her razor-sharp sword and the heavy club of ebony.
“Speak to me, spirit, and I will Speak for you!”
Its head turned, eyes fixing on her, growing brighter.
The mouth opened, stretching as if it was screaming.
Whispers floated to Hero’s ears and the Communion began.
Too late did she realize the danger Speaking would plunge her into as her limbs locked and her entire being focused on the dead spirit.
Well, fuck me .
Frozen, she broke out in a cold sweat. The hellhounds let loose a sound that seemed remarkably like laughter and her concern for Speaking with the girl’s shade took a distant second place in the scheme of things.
With a frenzied howl, the hellhounds pounced.
Oleander wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but he’d run to the quad with his weapon in hand – his blunderbuss this time; the inspector’s words still haunted him: “ Even I can’t dodge a spray of shot.
” And he was damn glad he’d arrived prepared when he found the inspector locked in a grim battle with hellhounds.
Well, sort of. As far as he could tell, she stood frozen in the midst of an entire pack of ghostly specters. Was it fear? Somehow he doubted it, but what else would explain her strange catatonia?
Luckily, he had no such compulsions. Though his heart pounded with excitement and blood rushed in his ears, his entire body felt as alive as it had ever been.
He moved with speed and strength, every part of him in harmony, his weapons extensions of his will, his soul.
It was always like this when he faced demonic beings, that thrill of the hunt.
To do what he was trained to do was the ultimate drug.
The blast of his blunderbuss shattered the afternoon calm.
No one else could see or hear the creatures of Hell outside of him and the cursed nun – not in this permutation, at least, half in and half out of the Gate to the Underworld – but he could because of his rigorous training and a cocktail of “special” drugs.
His gun and saber were also Goddess-blessed and designed for piercing the veil between worlds.
Demons always kept one toe in the Underworld to stay safe from conventional weapons, though this move was useless against a demonhunter’s arsenal.
Distantly, he heard the excited cries of students – the commotion had drawn a few white-faced bystanders from the cathedral – and a few screams here and there from nearby sisters.
But he blocked out all distractions, reloaded with lightning quickness, calmly fired at another of the hellhounds and watched in satisfaction as it disintegrated like the first ones.
The spray from the short, heavy gun was remarkably effective at close range, but in the thick of things reloading the one-shot weapon became nearly impossible.
He drew his saber and used the blunderbuss as a club, laying about with it generously while stabbing creature after creature with his blade.
The inspector hadn’t even flinched when he’d fired his blunderbuss, but he could see her eyes sliding frantically from side to side and her lips moving. Ah, so she wasn’t frozen with fear, then; she’d managed to catch a shade. Perhaps they could learn something useful for their case.
Or maybe the girl had simply fallen from a tower as Abigail thought?
Then why the hellhounds, Keen? Don’t be a dunce!
Oleander focused on doing his job. Hellhounds were demonic creatures, and he was very, very good at killing demons.
It was a veritable bloodbath, though the blood in this case was sparkling demonic humors, strangely beautiful as it cascaded onto the paving stones, the grass, the gravel, only to vanish in a twinkling of light.
The flames of Hell licked at the edges of his vision, but whenever he turned his head they vanished as quickly as the ethereal blood and viscera.
It was satisfying to unleash his talent but frustrating to witness supposedly hallowed ground being desecrated so blatantly.
He was fighting demon dogs called by a demon nun!
Or, at the very least, she’d given them access to the mortal plane by her recklessness.
He crushed the skull of a whining, injured hound with a stamp of his boot and eviscerated two more before checking on the inspector again.
She was blinking her flaming eyes, coming back to herself bit by bit.
The flames at the edges of the compound, always at the periphery of his sight, flickered and died, and the last of the shadowy hellhounds snapped out of existence.
His new partner staggered as the Gate closed, cutting her free.
He was a step too late to catch her arm and she went to her knees hard on the pavement.
Heart pounding fast and hard in his chest, Oleander holstered his blunderbuss and offered her a hand.
She stared at it as if she didn’t quite know what it was before she grasped it and let him haul her to her feet.
“Well,” she said, pulling her glasses from a pocket in her pants and hooking the wire frames back over her ears. Thankfully, her unholy eyes were dimmed once more. “That was interesting.”
“Was she murdered, Inspector?” he asked breathlessly, fascinated despite his initial reticence at being teamed with her.
He’d never worked with a death speaker before, especially one with her vaunted reputation.
She might prove a valuable partner even if she did have the terrible habit of summoning Hell to earth.
“Oh, most definitely.” Her green-shaded gaze went to the unfortunate dead girl. “Poor child,” she murmured. “Someone very much wanted to keep her silent. I don’t believe they intended to kill her, but it ended up that way all the same.”
“Do we have our killer?” He tried not to sound too disappointed. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? But for a death speaker, maybe it was.
“Unfortunately, no. Something powerful is at work here, Demonhunter. The shade tried its best to speak to me, but unknown forces kept the Communion muddled.” A frown, fierce and angry. “It’s time to begin interrogations. Tell the revered mother to gather her students and staff.”
He cringed, imagining the formidable woman’s reaction to such a demand. “Should we… should we wait and see what the chief has to say?”
Hero lifted an eyebrow. “This is our case. We run it the way we think is best.” She adjusted her glasses and gave him a look. “Are you up to the task, Keen?”
“Yes, Inspector.” He clicked his heels, embarrassed by his own hesitation. “I am.”
“Good. Let the mother know she’s on my list, too.”
His stomach sank. Goddess save him!