CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO #2
“Keen!” Hero’s angry shriek echoed down the empty road, but it was too late. Panting, muscles trembling with fatigue, Keen stepped back from his opponent, letting the man slide off his saber to land face down on the road.
Finally, he dared to face his partner. Whatever beastly aspect she’d used to destroy his attackers had vanished and she stood on the road, a tall, silver-crowned figure in a scapular and harem pants. Her swirling eyes of flame met his. “What have you done?” she said.
“He attacked me! What else was I to do?” Her approbation seemed wildly hypocritical considering the body parts strewn about her and the blood dripping from her hands. Scowling, he waved his saber at the evidence. “You just slaughtered three men!”
She didn’t spare the dead even a glance.
“They were demons,” she said. “If you hadn’t been so distracted by your alleged damsel in distress, you would have known that.
Instead, you rode right into a trap and failed to properly assess your danger.
He–” she stabbed a long finger at Dirk “–was human. A human under a powerful spell. Didn’t you hear him begging for help? Goddess damn you, Keen!”
Shock turned his belly to ice. “I – he–” The words wouldn’t form. He glanced back at Dirk’s body, lying in the dirt, and felt a rising nausea. Was she right? Had he just murdered a bespelled human? Had his jealousy and hatred and need for revenge prevented him from seeing it?
Hero strode toward him, tall and indomitable. “There’s only one way to find out for sure,” she said angrily, and took him by the arm with fingers made of steel. “Prepare yourself.”
“For what?”
Her swirling eyes pinned him and a roaring filled his ears. “For Hell, Demonhunter.”
The halls of the Underworld spun away from them in rippling corridors, appearing and disappearing seemingly at random amidst great walls of flame.
Shades flickered in and out of existence, going about their business, seeking the proper Sphere.
Keen thought they were moving, but it was hard to be sure; nothing made sense.
Hell was Chaos. He could feel his pounding heart and Hero’s hand clamped on his arm but little else.
Did he even exist anymore? Could a living person, a human man, delve the worlds of the dead and survive?
“As long as we maintain contact, you will be fine,” Hero assured him, which did little to put him at ease.
She faced him with eyes no longer aflame.
Here, they were normal, if crimson irises could be called normal.
Somehow, it was comforting to look into them.
In this insane place, she seemed the least insane thing.
Her grip on his arm suddenly felt like a lifeline.
“Don’t let go,” he said, an embarrassing quaver in his voice.
She smiled a very human smile. “You aren’t really here, Keen. Not physically, just spiritually. Nevertheless,” she went on, her smile turning less human, “don’t try and wander off or you might get lost for all eternity.”
He had no intention of wandering anywhere in this place. “Why did you bring me here?”
“To find the truth before it can be meddled with,” she said cryptically.
The rippling flames became streams, giving a sense of movement.
“I will Commune with Hollander’s shade before anything can get to him.
You were right, Keen: Jerry’s shade lied to me.
I think the whole thing was planned – Jerry’s arrest, forcing a confession, having him murdered in his cell – all to plant those visions in my head.
The dead can’t lie to me. Why would I ever question the Communion?
But I was wrong. And now I know Catarine wasn’t held in Braun’s apartment or killed there. ”
He clung to the sound of her voice, going limp in her grasp as he was led along like a toddler. “Where was she killed?” His voice was faint, echoing, but she heard him.
“In the catacombs,” she said grimly. “Someone lured her there after she’d returned from Jerry’s. She went willingly, which tells me she knew who it was. I believe she was taken through the tunnels to where that presence lurks beneath Bright Renewal.”
Keen would have shuddered if he’d been able to feel his body. “How did you discover this?”
“I went to Braun’s place after Dr Virchow confirmed the substance left behind on Catarine’s skin wasn’t the residue of some common demon of Pandemonium.
I had to see for myself whether any of those visions made sense.
Lo and behold, there wasn’t a trace of blood at the supposed crime scene, but I did find something of Catarine Cisco: a shade of a shade, barely a glimmer.
It’s all that’s left of her, the poor thing. I chased it to the catacombs.”
“She must have had a strong spirit,” Keen pointed out. It was unbearably tragic. All Sister Catarine had wanted to do was protect her students.
“There he is,” Hero announced, and they slowed to a stop, the flames re-forming around them again in dense, impenetrable walls. He felt dizzy even though he couldn’t really feel his head. His vision dimmed and then sharpened. A dark form stood in front of them, man-shaped, big and broad-shouldered.
“Dirk Hollander,” she said, an undeniable authority in her voice.
The shade turned or morphed or… something, and then Keen was looking into the eyes of his dead tormentor. Dirk’s eyes were soft and full of confusion. Did he even know he was dead? Keen had no idea how any of this worked.
“Watch,” Hero whispered to him, “and learn. I will begin the Communion.”
Images flooded his vision as Dirk’s life played out on the walls of flame.
His death came first, his fear and panic overwhelming as he fought for his life.
Silent screams for help echoed in his thoughts even as he parried and sought to kill his opponent – Oleander Keen.
His desperation was an oily stink. Then there was pain, shock and an upwelling of relief as his torment finally ended.
Then came visions of that torment. Dirk stretched on a rack, hot pokers searing his skin. Laughter mixed with his screams, high and feminine and oddly familiar. Dirk on his knees, begging for forgiveness, groveling, weeping. A slim hand settling on his head, patting him as if he were a good dog.
Keen wanted to look away but couldn’t. He couldn’t even close his eyes since he had no eyes in this place.
The images changed, became distorted. He was seeing the world from Dirk’s perspective now.
The man was in a vast cavern with flame-lit rock walls and dripping stalactites above a deep, dark pit carved from solid stone.
A woman knelt at the edge of the pit, nude body white against the darkness.
Around her slim neck was a pale, gleaming collar of something like stone.
A translucent chain led from it, dropping over the edge of the pit into nothingness.
Energy pulsed through the bright links. A second woman, dressed in a long, white robe edged in crimson lace, approached the kneeling victim.
Again, Keen desperately wanted to look away, but Hero had him in a ruthless hold, controlling what he was seeing.
So he had to watch as Abigail Hollander wrenched open Catarine’s mouth, fingers digging cruelly into her chin, and took hold of her tongue.
Catarine didn’t even struggle as Abby’s hand worked deeper, twisting and wrenching, until with a fierce jerk she yanked the tongue loose in a spray of blood.
A wash of crimson poured from the nun’s mouth, sluicing down her bare chest, only to rise in a sparkling wave and stick to the chain like metal filings against a magnet, then vanish. Consumed.
Devourer.
Keen would have thrown up if he’d been physically present. As it stood, all he could feel was a psychic pain so awful he thought he might die.
Abigail stepped back, leaving Catarine slumped over her knees, then turned and handed the raw bit of flesh to her husband. Keen now watched from Dirk’s perspective, his beefy hand accepting the gift and tucking it into a jacket pocket – a damning piece of evidence, to keep the man in line.
Keen’s attention returned to the motionless nun. Was Catarine dead now, or dying? The pulse of energy flowing down the spectral chains began to slow, a final heartbeat slowing… slowing…
“Here is where her shade was eaten,” Hero whispered in his mind. “It took six days to drain her life, but only a moment to consume her soul. A Celestial nun is a tasty snack for whatever Abigail is summoning here. Although why she sacrificed her best friend, I do not know.”
“This – this cannot be,” he said. Could Hero’s power even be trusted anymore? “How do you know this isn’t another trick?”
“I don’t,” she admitted, her spectral voice making the flames around them shimmer.
The vast cavern vanished, along with the horrible images of Abigail and the dead nun.
Only the fiery walls of Hell remained and a single shade – a sad, slumped, diminished essence of a once-living man.
“But enough of me believes it. Believes him.”
Dirk stared back at them mournfully. Sorrow and regret radiated from the spirit.
His mouth didn’t open, but suddenly Keen heard his voice: “I always hated you, Keen. I didn’t like how Abby treated you like her little pet.
I thought you were beneath her attention, you know?
A shitty little kid from Otherside.” The shade’s head turned to glance behind it as if sensing something they could not.
A ripple shivered through it. “But I was wrong. I was blind to her faults, her manipulations. She wanted me to hate you; she encouraged it. I was so twisted up, so angry and jealous all the time, I didn’t even care when she revealed that she and her family were beholden to a creature beyond nightmare.
By then, I was under her complete control.
I did what she asked. Always.” The shade began to thin, to grow transparent, but Keen felt Dirk’s gaze upon him.
“I see so clearly now, but it’s too late for me.
Don’t make the same mistake I did. She has sold her soul for immortality, wealth and influence.
She and her cabal would rather see the entire world consumed than give up a hair of their power.
They think they can control this Devourer, give it scraps and offerings in exchange for wealth and influence.
But it is evil. It is pure destruction. And it will come for us all. ”
The shade wavered again, more strongly this time, rippling like a flag caught in a strong wind. “Catarine knew Abby’s secret, so… she had to die.”
In a sudden upwelling of darkness, the shade vanished, only the echo of a scream remaining.
Whatever was left of Dirk Hollander was gone, sucked into a void.
Keen felt himself being drawn in as well, but Hero let out a hiss of defiance, tightened her grip on his arm and dragged him from the grasp of oblivion.
The next instant, he was on his knees on the dirt road, the sky dark above them, the trees rustling in a stiff breeze.
The chilly air wrapped around him, making him shiver.
He replayed the final thrust of his saber through Dirk, felt the resistance of flesh against the sharp blade, heard the sickening scrape of metal upon bone.
Bile rose in his throat. Dirk had been begging for his help–
Keen bent forward and vomited, his partner silent above him. But he felt her judgment, as unforgiving as the Goddess Herself.