23. Black Death
Chapter Twenty-Three
Black Death
Tíarnach
In the shadow of the nearby mountain peak, I press my hand upon the earth, feeling the unrest and the sickness. Seismic activity thrums beneath my palm, the vibration stronger here than where I last tested. The ground is both warm and damp. Hot enough that it has begun to sweat.
When I lift my hand, dark soil clings to my skin. I analyze it as I rub it between my fingers, bringing it up to my nose to catch a faint metallic scent that doesn’t belong.
While surveying the area, I absently dust my hand off on my knee.
From the looks of it, the corruption has spoiled fertile soil and spread outward. The noxious, sulfurous gas seeps up from below, poisoning everything it touches.
Roots. Nature. The very air I breathe.
Minutes later, after I vault onto Mardoch, I drive him hard toward the epicenter of it—where the presence of evil coils thickest. I have yet to determine what I may be dealing with, only that my duty to locate the last of the worthy souls to rejoin Heaven is no longer my priority.
Stopping this—and whatever is causing it—is.
Had I not been delayed while playing doctor and scientist, I would be much further ahead in my hunt for the souls I’d been tasked to protect. But the Russian mercenaries were determined to find a cure before anyone else—hoard the vaccine and wield it as leverage for resources.
The greatest plight of humanity—and one that may ultimately be its ruin—greed.
Yet… they were not wrong in their assessment, only in their execution.
Because, yes, the immune are the key to man’s survival. Without them, all would be lost.
So I stayed hidden among them as long as I could, ensuring the cure didn’t fall into the wrong hands, but the right ones—the female doctor who proved herself not only capable but worthy of the discovery, and of seeing it dispersed far and wide.
In doing so, I entrusted the dawn of man to a single woman, hoping to restore the balance once disrupted by Lucifer himself.
But balance is a tricky thing, and never so easily reclaimed. Because at the very moment one scale righted, another tipped.
Hell’s gates had somehow been torn open, and thousands upon thousands of souls were unaccounted for. After learning of this from my brothers, I came when called for aid—crossing land and sea as fast as my wings could carry me. A summoning they wouldn’t have made unless the situation was dire.
Before even reaching this continent, I felt the truth of their claim and have been searching for the source of the unrest ever since.
Finally reaching the massive wound in the earth, I dismount quickly, unwilling to bring Mardoch any closer. Unease bleeds through the bond we share, but he stays where I command him to do so, as I continue on foot.
The land surrounding the crevice lies flattened.
Not trampled but pressed. As if a great weight forced the breath from the earth itself.
Dead grass bends in unnatural patterns, some of it fused in blackened patches, other parts stripped down to brittle husks that crumble at the slightest disturbance.
A carcass lies half buried near the edge. Not only are the gones picked clean, but they’re also warped and darkened as though exposed to the kind of heat unknown to this world. The skull is split clean through, not by tooth or claw, but by force.
I shift the carcass aside with my boot to get a better look at the old blood staining the soil. Black and thicker than oil. Long since dried and leaving behind a dark smear.
A demon long dead.
My gaze lifts. I note the heat rolling outward from the opening, distorting the air and bearing the sharp bite of hellfire and rot.
Which is responsible for the absence of life in the vicinity and oppressive silence. Stretching my awareness further, I find that what little of nature remains nearby is shadowed by death—ripe with toxins and leeched of vitality.
All beyond my grasp to heal, so I do what I can and grant them the peaceful death they deserve, withdrawing their souls from their flesh and letting their spirits pass into God’s care.
Once done, I get back to dealing with the issue at hand.
My leathers give with the movement as I bend to lay my hand against the earth.
This time, the vibration is not subtle. It surges up my arm, deep and insistent, rattling in my chest like a second heartbeat. I force my focus downward—past the shifting plates, toward the source buried far below.
The gate.
The moment I make contact with its presence, I recoil.
Large.
Far larger than any fracture born of natural upheaval.
Slowly, I stand while flexing my fingers to rid them of the abhorrent sensation.
My gaze travels across the gaping tear. The cliff face on this side is jagged and violently split, while the opposite edge is soft and crumbling, the earth there collapsing inward as though it has already begun to surrender.
Unstable.
Cautiously, I circle the perimeter, measuring each step, noting where the soil gives too easily or threatens to fall away entirely. But it is not the land itself that holds my attention.
It is the tracks—scattered at first, singular, then clustering where multiple demons escaped, leaving behind impressions no man or animal could make. Evidence of passage.
The smaller tracks aren’t what troubles me the most.
No. It’s the one I find on the southern edge of the crevice.
Boots with no tread.
Taking a knee, I trace the impressions with my finger, measuring their depth… their length… their width. The weight required to make them is considerable—enough to drive them far deeper than my own.
Heel to toe.
The spacing between each suggests long strides taken without haste.
I follow the trail for several yards—long enough to be certain—then double back.
First things first.
Close the gate—or, at the very least, contain it long enough to buy us time. Then I’ll track the demons down.
Reaching outward with my awareness, I sweep the surrounding area, ensuring I am still alone. Only then do I let my cloak dissolve into ether and disappear from sight while calling my true form forward.
My wings unfurl.
They spread wide with a low rush of displaced air, stretching to their full span. Their color stands in stark contrast to the light of day—midnight black, the inlaid gold nearly swallowed by the onyx, save for where the sun catches and holds it in brief, gleaming traces.
Though it’s been days since my arrival, the ache from the arduous journey lingers—a dull reminder held in muscle and joints that protest any movement.
I raise a hand to remove my mask next… then think better of it. The stench alone is reason enough to keep it in place. But more than that, my identity must remain hidden from all but God and my brothers. They are the only ones who know what I truly am, and that I took the place of another.
After drawing my curved blades from my back, I stride toward the edge and let gravity claim me.
A heartbeat, and then my wings catch air, softening my fall as well as guiding my descent.
Releasing my light, I let it spill from my chest, bleeding outward in a low, steady glow. Gold. Not the sterile white of Heaven’s halls, but something warmer. Older.
The walls are not cleanly split, but wrenched apart—forced open to reveal the Earth’s buried layers.
Not just soil and stone, bands of compacted earth, each an indication of time itself, veins of different minerals glint as light touches them.
I pass fossils, roots, and rock that have long ago fused with stone—fragments of life long since ended, and locked away beneath the world that replaced it.
All of it now twisted and warped by the immense heat, strain, and pollution it was never meant to endure.
Below, a molten pit churns, radiating heat and pulsing with its own unnatural light, lacing the air with hellfire—humid, dense, and stifling.
It licks at leather and armor, which warms but remains resistant to the intense temperature.
In the darkness below, two pairs of eyes stare up at me—easy to spot as their pale and hairless bodies stand out against the dark stone. Soulless creatures, both of them. Different species.
As I near the first who has climbed higher than the other, it turns, hissing—fangs bared, orb-white eyes burning with feral malice.
I do not grant it the mercy of a slow death.
I slice its head cleanly from its shoulders.
In the same motion, I drive my other sword deep into the rock beside it, anchoring myself just long enough to watch the body tumble backward—vanishing into the inferno below.
The head soon follows.
I release the blade, forcing a burst of air against the cliff face to propel myself across the divide. My hand catches an outcropping. I hang for a fraction of a second before dropping—twenty feet—gripping another ledge.
The second creature lunges.
I dispatch it before it can make contact. Its body strikes the rock wall once—twice—before plunging into the gate, where the flames consume it in an instant.
If anything watches from the other side, the message should be clear.
This gate is closed.
I sheath my blades and throw out a hand, redirecting the heat as I descend, stopping just short of the gate itself.
Nearly nine feet across.
Wide enough to allow far worse through.
The heat intensifies near its center—yellow, then white—where the fire burns hottest. Around its edges lie the remains of those who failed. Blackened bones. Twisted forms. Some fused into the rock itself, as though the stone had begun to swallow them mid-passage.
Either something waited for them on the other side…or they failed to recover from the damage they suffered. Which means those who survived either regenerated or found a way to briefly negate the fire. A shield. A barrier. Something to stop the gate here from burning them whole.
I center and focus before calling more power to me.
Using my wings to hold myself aloft—I adjust as the rock beside me begins to shift.