Hellfighters

  Pan, listen to me.

  No.

  It slipped from her grip, rolling away, and she left it, pulling the last bolt loose. Mammon was still standing there, sparks rippling over his body like they were trying to find a way in, trying to find a way to hurt him. He lifted a hand and she felt something cold and dark in the air around her, felt herself rise from the ground. The raw sewage stench of him was unbearable.

  She twisted against his invisible grip, tilted the crossbow toward him.

  Pan, stop, listen to me.

  She pulled the trigger. This time Mammon wasn’t quick enough, the bolt slicing past his face. She felt his hold on her loosen and she crashed earthward, pain flaring in her knee as she landed. The crossbow skidded away and she scrabbled for it.

  Something wrapped itself around her foot, yanking her back. Her face slammed against the floor, a tooth spinning away. For a moment there was nothing, her vision a series of dark, churning cogs like she’d been thrown into the heart of the Engine. She blinked hard and the world snapped back on. She was still being dragged over the rough stone, something locked python-tight around her ankle.

  Grunting with the effort, she managed to flip herself onto her back. Mammon was ten yards away and reeling her in like a fish. His body danced in and out of reality, his face shifting like a collection of photographs being shown at lightning speed.

  You do not have to fight me, he said. We are on—

  She punched another bolt of energy at him, this one weaker but still enough to make him lift his arm in self-defense. It crackled into him, pushing him back, and she fired another, and another. The grip on her leg vanished and she forced herself onto her feet, loosing another attack. This one hit Mammon in the chest and he staggered away, his cry like a shrapnel grenade had exploded inside her head.

  Where the hell was the bolt she’d dropped?

  She fired another charge, pathetically small. Her body was running on fumes but it didn’t matter. She didn’t have to fight for much longer. If she could just find it …

  There, near the stairs.

  She ran for it, Mammon roaring behind her. She could feel the force of his voice like the shock wave of an explosion and she almost fell again, her arms wheeling to keep herself upright. Another pulse howled its way from somewhere inside the Engine, an enormous pillar of fire curling lazily toward the ceiling. There was no sign of Marlow.

  More invisible hands trying to grab her. She dived, rolling out of their reach and snatching the bolt from the stone.

  No time to get the crossbow.

  She gripped the bolt and ran, willing the last few charges from her fingers. The air crackled with thunder. Mammon weaved out of their way, his face—faces—a mask of fury. Then he was moving, too, running right for her, shattering his way through reality. His mouth stretched, too wide, so wide that he might be about to swallow her up. And he roared, a noise that could have broken every bone in her body.

  But still she ran, no charge left. She ran and ran, unleashing a scream of her own that had been building inside her for years—since her mom had turned her back on her, since Christoph had tried to take her, since the cops had arrested her and Herc had saved her, since she’d first heard Mammon’s name, since her first mission, since she’d stood by and watched all those people die, all of her friends. She screamed until there was nothing left inside her, and she ran until there was nothing left between them.

  He lunged for her but she put her head down and tackled him. There was no air left in her lungs to be knocked away but she still felt it in every tendon, like she’d tried to bring down a bear. They locked in a demented dance. She held the bolt like a knife, jabbing it into his flank. But his arms were around her, crushing. She had no space to move. His touch was cold, turning her blood to ice. His graveyard stench enveloped her, choking her. He squeezed harder and she felt the vertebrae in her back creak, ready to pop.

  Just stop! Mammon yelled at her. Just stop!

  No.

  She dug deep, deeper than she’d ever gone, and found something there. She grabbed hold of a handful of cloth and pulsed the last of her electrostatic energy into his ribs. A direct hit.

  Room to breathe, to move. She swung her hand around again and this time the bolt found its target, sticking in the flesh of Mammon’s side. It was like dropping a flare into a canister of gas, the force of the explosion spinning her away on a cushion of heat and noise. She landed on her back, skidding into the rim of the black pool.

  Darkness, the overwhelming force of it trying to pull her in, trying to smother her.

  Get up, she told herself.

  She clawed her way out of it, her eyes bulging, her mouth hanging open. Mammon was right in front of her—no longer a shifting mirage of faces but a man. No, a boy. He looked younger than her, younger than Marlow, curls of blond hair falling over his eyes, his mouth twisted into a grimace of pain. The bolt stuck out of his side and his clothes were smoldering there, tongues of flame licking up.

  “Just die!” Pan said. She’d meant it as a scream but it came out as less than a whisper, just a breath. She tried to stand, found that she couldn’t and pushed herself onto the lip of the pool instead. Behind her the black water sat ink-thick and agitated, nothing reflected in its depths.

  “Pan,” said Mammon, and the sound of his voice almost sent her toppling back into the waters. It was a young boy’s voice, high and trembling.

  Just a trick. Just another lie.

  She needed to push the bolt in deeper, right into the bastard’s heart. It was the only way to finish it. She tried to move again, everything inside her drenched in pain.

  “Pan, no more,” said Mammon. He collapsed onto his knees, his coat billowing out around him. Gripping the bolt with one hand, he pulled. “You have to listen to me. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  She took as deep a breath as her busted lungs would allow.

  “I’m killing you,” she managed. “That’s what I’m doing. I’m ending this.”

  “You’re ending everything,” he said. “You’re ending the world. Please.” He stopped, panting with the effort of trying to pull the bolt loose. “Please just listen. I have tried to tell you this for so long, but he would not let me. He would never let me. He has poisoned your mind, Pan. He has poisoned everything you believe in, and everything you think is true.”

  “Who?” she said, finally managing to stagger to her feet. Out in the Engine another column of flame rose, illuminating the platform and Mammon’s face. The kid looked up at her with big blue eyes. Was he crying?

  “Ostheim,” he groaned, spit hanging from his lips. “Ostheim. He has turned you against everything that is right. He has been lying to you. He has been using you. All this time you thought you fought for good, for what was right. But how did you know? How could you know? You took his word for it.”

  Despite the fire, everything inside her ran cold.

  “No,” she said. “Ostheim is good. He’s trying to stop you from bringing the Engines together, from opening the gates.”

  Mammon shook his head, great fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “No, Pan,” he said. “I never wanted to open the gates. I wanted to bring the Engines together because it is the only way of destroying them.”

  “What?” she said. “No, that’s not true. You’re a liar. You’re nothing but a liar and a killer and…”

  The words abandoned her. There was no way he could be right, could he? There was no damn way.

  Mammon cried out and the bolt came loose in a gout of blood. Pan steeled herself, trying to shake some charge into the ends of her fingers. But he just held the bolt up in one hand and threw it to her. It clattered across the stone, skidding into the raised edge of the pool.

  “I am telling you the truth,” he said as he clambered unsteadily to his feet. “I’ve always tried to tell you the truth. Ostheim is the enemy. He has been trying to unite the Engines so that he can bring down the wall between the worlds, so that he c
an open the gates of hell. He is evil, Pan.”

  He shuddered, patting at the flames on his jacket. His face was starting to buzz again, separating into pieces, but he made no move toward her. He just stood there, shoulders sagging, breathing hard.

  “He is evil. He has always been trying to end this world. And for years now, you have been helping him do it.”

  No.

  No.

  No.

  She turned away from him, hands to her ears.

  No.

  It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be.

  Ostheim, he’d always been straight with her, always sent her on missions that would help save the world.

  But were they?

  All those deaths, all those assassinations. What if Mammon was right, what if she’d been killing off the good guys, the ones who wanted to save the world?

  Please God, no.

  She searched her head but not one single thing, not one single memory, contradicted his words.

  No.

  And she was crying now, her hands to her mouth. Mammon was wrong, he had to be wrong.

  Because if he was right, then she was a monster.

  “I’m sorry, Pan,” he said behind her. “I truly am.”

  Only one way to know for sure.

  Only one way to know the truth.

  Pan climbed onto the lip of the black pool, took a breath, and threw herself in.

  REUNITED

  Marlow had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

  Pan was running across the platform, crossbow in her hands, her whole body glowing with the force of the energy inside her.

  She could take care of herself. He cut to the side, the Engine a maelstrom of movement ahead of him, a mechanical hurricane. The last time he’d been here it had been nothing like this, just an insect whisper from somewhere out there. But the last time he’d been here it had simply been forging his contract.

  Now it was preparing to open a door between worlds.

  He reached the edge of the platform and skidded to a halt. Beneath him the Engine whirred in a frenzy, needles and pins and cogs and springs churning. It was like standing on a cliff in a storm and he had to close his eyes against a rush of vertigo. How the hell was he supposed to find Charlie?

  He opened his eyes, scanned the ocean-big mass of moving parts. The last explosion was still rising like a comet tail, something burning out there.

  He jumped, landing hard at the foot of the Engine. From down here it was more like a forest, the parts so much bigger than they looked from above. The speed they moved at was terrifying, like he was standing in front of a combine harvester—blades of dark metal about to slice him apart. The noise was like nothing he had ever experienced, so loud that he could feel it in every cell.

  It was almost as if it was calling to him, and when he took a step forward the section right in front of him stopped dead, a path opening up in the madness.

  It wanted him to enter.

  He hesitated, then put a hand to his lips, feeling the heat of Pan’s kiss there. He wasn’t sure what she’d done to him, but some of his terror had evaporated. He was still afraid, but she had given him strength. She had promised him, too. She had made a contract of her own. Get through this, and there will be another kiss.

  And that had to be worth risking death for, right?

  He stepped between two vast black trunks, each twice as tall as him and forged from a dull, black metal. They bristled with spikes that looked like drill bits, and were ringed by vast iron cogs. Branches split out from them, each of which had to contain thousands of moving parts—each smaller than the one it was connected to until they were so minuscule he couldn’t even see them. They looked sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone. And they had to be, he guessed, because each of those pieces had the ability to open a hole in reality and change whatever lay beneath.

  But they stayed still as he passed, the machine grinding to a halt, showing him which way to go. He plunged into the darkness, into the noise. Every time he passed a section of the Engine it began to move again behind him, the air thrumming with the force of it.

  Not far ahead there was another explosion, one that filled the Engine with fire and made it groan like a living thing, like some huge leviathan. What the hell was happening up there? Was that the sound of somebody breaking the seals of the universe? Opening the gate?

  A section of the Engine spun to a halt and he pushed through it. On the other side was something resembling a forest that had been cleared and burned, an area the size of an airplane hangar where there were no cogs, no gears—just pieces of broken metal embedded in the ground, everything drenched in fire. The scorched earth ahead was glowing red hot, puddles of molten iron turning the air into a shimmering haze. There was so much smoke that even though his contract was still in place, his asthma cured, he was struggling to breathe. So much smoke that he could barely see twenty feet in front of him.

  But twenty feet was enough. There was a shape there, a figure standing in the horror and the heat.

  Not so much standing in it, as made from it.

  “Charlie?” Marlow called out, choking on the word. He took a step into the ruin but had to stop because the heat was just too much. The shimmering silhouette ahead was walking away, disappearing into the haze. He opened his mouth and called his name again, louder.

  This time the figure stopped, and turned. He stood in the inferno like he was sculpted from flame, his body a core of darkness wearing a corona of blazing yellow. He took another step, the bones of the Engine crunching beneath his feet. Closer now, and Marlow could see that where his eyes should have been there were just portals of light; it was like staring into the depths of hell itself. He felt that if he looked at them for too long he would simply end, that the sheer power there would scrub him from existence.

  It’s not Charlie, he realized. It’s a demon. Or worse.

  The figure kept coming, faster now. It lifted a burning hand and pointed it at Marlow, the air actually crackling and spitting with the heat of his touch.

  Oh no.

  Marlow turned to run, but the wall of parts behind him was spinning again, a gyroscope of blades that caged him in.

  Death in a furnace or death in a blender. What the hell kind of choice was that?

  He whirled back, fists clenched. Even with the power of the Engine inside him he didn’t stand a chance against whatever this was. It would turn him into ash with just a thought. It took another couple of steps toward him, the roar of it even louder than the sound of the Engine, the heat of it making the hair on his head curl and shrivel even though it was fifteen feet away.

  No chance, but what else could he do?

  He ran, but the heat was too much. It was like moving into a burning building, his skin blistering. He slowed, squinting through his fingers, knowing that any second now he was going to erupt.

  Then the demon blinked, and the flames sputtered out like he’d been doused with water. It took a moment for the splotches of light to leave Marlow’s vision, but when he could see again he wasn’t sure whether to start laughing or crying.

  In the end, he did both.

  Charlie stood there, his best friend, his only friend. He looked just the way he had the last time Marlow had seen him, the same messy brown hair, the same wide eyes.

  Only this time he was stark naked.

  His skin rippled with delicate petals of flame, his bare feet standing in a puddle of molten rock. The air around him still danced, making him look more like an illusion than ever. He studied Marlow like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, then his mouth lifted into a smile.

  “Charlie!” Marlow yelled again, and he almost started running again, ready to wrap his arms around him, until he remembered where they were. “What the hell, dude?” he yelled over the sound of the Engine. “What’s going on? What happened to you?”

  “Same thing that happened to you,” said Charlie, his voice the same as Marlow remembered, the same voice he’d listened to a
nd shared stories with and laughed alongside for years. “The Engine.”

  “I don’t get it, man,” said Marlow, coughing smoke from his lungs. “I don’t get why you’d side with Mammon. What did he offer you? Money? Whatever it was, Charlie, it wasn’t worth it. It isn’t worth this.”

  “Marlow, you got it all wrong,” said Charlie.

  “It’s because I left you, right?” Marlow shouted. “Back on Staten Island. I’m sorry, man, I never should have done that. I just … I just didn’t want to see you get hurt. I’m sorry.”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “If you hadn’t left me there then Mammon never would have found me. I never would have discovered the truth.”

  “You can’t trust a thing he tells you,” Marlow said. A section of the Engine behind Charlie gave way, metal screeching as it crashed into the glowing rock. Marlow flinched. “He’s a liar, he just wants to open the gates. You’ve seen what happens, you’ve—”

  “Says who, Marlow?” Charlie asked, taking a step forward. “Says Ostheim?”

  “Yeah,” said Marlow. “He’s been trying to stop Mammon for years, for like decades. It can’t happen, Charlie. Our families, all those people, they’ll die.”

  Charlie actually laughed.

  “Mammon was right,” he said, taking another step toward Marlow. “He was totally right. You have no idea.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marlow said. “No idea about what?”

  “That you’re fighting on the wrong side,” he said. “You’re fighting with the bad guys.”

  “That’s a lie,” Marlow said. The sweat was stinging his eyes and he wiped it away. The heat was unbearable, the inside of his mouth made of kindling. He felt that with one stray spark he’d erupt into flames. “Pan, Herc, they’re good people, they’re trying to do the right thing.”

  “Maybe,” Charlie shouted back. “But they’re good people following the orders of a bad man. Ostheim, he’s trying to bring the Engines together. He’s been trying for years. He’s the one who wants to end the world.”