Daemons Are Forever

  Harry glared at him. “There was no need for it to be that brutal!”

  “Oh, no need,” said Roger. “But it was fun.” He smiled at me. “You can’t tell us you never dreamed of doing that, Eddie.”

  “No,” I said. “I never dreamed of doing anything like that, hellspawn. ”

  “Oh well,” said Roger. “No point crying over spilled brains.”

  “I could kill the hellspawn for you, if you like,” said Mr. Stab.

  He might have been discussing the weather. Roger started to say something, looked at Mr. Stab, and thought better of it.

  “Thanks for the thought,” I said. “But no.”

  “We have to get to the tower,” said Molly, her voice cold and focused. “It’s not far. I can feel its presence with my magics.”

  “Then lead the way,” I said.

  We followed Molly through the maze of steel corridors, and down into the deepest part of the underground bunker, until we were in a great steel-walled chamber directly under the standing Stones of Stonehenge. And there it was, sunk deep into a pit hollowed out of the bare earth; tall and complex and unnaturally shaped, the last tower of the Loathly Ones. There wasn’t room to build it high, so they’d sunk it deep. We could only see the top twenty feet or so, a jagged structure of alien technology combined with flesh and blood. Metal and crystal seamlessly fused with living parts. We all circled slowly around the exposed top of the tower, our feet sinking into the wet earth. This close, there was no doubt the thing was alive, in its own awful way. It was alive and it was aware. It knew we were there . . . and it didn’t care. It was complete and it was activated, We’d arrived too late.

  Already a gateway was forming, an opening to another place. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I could feel it on some deeper, primal level: like a great eye watching me, like a wound in the world, like a door into Hell. Like a great cold wind blowing right at me from a direction I couldn’t name, chilling me down to the soul. Slowly I became aware of sounds too. I don’t think I was hearing them with my ears. Voices; howling, screaming, laughing, coupled with the sounds of tearing flesh and great siege engines slamming together forever. All the sounds of Hell on earth.

  Molly grabbed me by the arm and shook me fiercely, and I came to myself again. Harry and Roger and Giles and even Mr. Stab were still staring wide-eyed and entranced at the forming gateway, as strange energies swirled and coalesced around the tower.

  “We’ve got to do something!” said Molly. “The gateway’s opening! They’re coming!”

  “I guess Jacob and Jay never got through after all,” I said numbly.

  “Eddie . . . !”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.” I looked at her. “How do you feel, Molly?”

  “I’m still me,” she said, meeting my gaze squarely. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”

  “Then let’s do it,” I said. I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out Janissary Jane’s weapon of last resort, the Deplorable End. It still didn’t look like much.

  “Do we have the right to destroy our whole universe, just to wipe out the Hungry Gods?” said Molly.

  “Hell no,” said Roger unexpectedly. He’d torn his attention away from the tower and was now looking at the thing squatting on my palm. “Is that what I think it is? Eddie, you can’t use it. Not while there’s still a chance, any chance . . .”

  I had to smile. “A demon who still believes in hope. Now I’ve seen everything.”

  “I believe in him,” said Roger, looking at Harry. “I have to hope . . . that we can find a way to be together. Not even a half demon is automatically damned for all time. You have to save the world, Eddie, so we can have a place to grow old in.”

  “If the Hungry Gods come through, they’ll destroy this world and everything in it,” said Molly. “And then move on, from world to world, until there isn’t a living thing left anywhere. That’s what they do. Cosmic locusts.”

  “I have no intention of destroying this universe, or this world,” I said. “I never did. I think . . . I’ll wait till the gateway has opened enough, and then I’ll go through it into their universe, their world; and blow it all to shit before they can come through.”

  “You’re not going in there alone,” Molly said immediately. “You’ll need my magics just to survive in their world long enough to press the button. I won’t let you die alone.”

  “Molly . . .”

  “What reason have I got to live without you?” said Molly. “What reason have I got to live, as I am?”

  “And you’re going to need me,” said Giles Deathstalker. He had Harry and Mr. Stab by the arms, pulling them away from the tower. They were both shaking their heads, coming to themselves again. Giles looked at me calmly. “You’ll need me to help you survive and operate in an alien environment. You’re not used to that. I am.”

  “Fine by me,” said Harry, blinking his eyes hard, careful not to look directly at the tower. “Roger and I and Mr. Stab will stay here, and . . . guard the situation.”

  “Quite right,” said Mr. Stab. “I know my limitations.” He nodded briefly to me. “You, of course, are a Drood, and therefore have no limitations. Everyone knows that.”

  I looked at Giles. “I didn’t bring you here, across thousands of years, just so you could die fighting for someone else’s cause.”

  He shrugged easily. “I am a warrior. Fighting is what I do. And besides, this is about family as well as saving humanity. You took me in, made me feel like one of you. I never knew that before. Never really had a family, before. You taught me the worth of duty and honour and responsibility. You have shown me what it really is to be a man. To be a Drood, and a Deathstalker. So I will fight, and if need be die, for what you gave me. Anything, for the family.”

  Roger looked around sharply, glaring at the tower. “It knows we’re planning something. It’s just put out some kind of call, or alarm . . . summoning something.”

  We all looked around sharply as, from back inside the bunker, we heard something moving. The sound of bodies rising up, and slow dragging feet . . . and I just knew what it had to be. All the dead bodies in Truman’s base, raised up by the tower’s power, and summoned to defend it in its time of need. The dead, called to strike down the living. I grinned at Harry.

  “Looks like you’re going to have to guard the situation after all. Hold your ground, keep those things back, for as long as you can. Just in case the three of us can find a way to come home. You never know.”

  “I’ll hold this ground till you return, or Hell freezes over,” said Harry. “I may be a bit of a bastard, but I’m still a Drood. As long as there’s a fragment of hope left, I’ll wait here for you to return.”

  The gateway opened around the tower, unfolding and unfolding like some monstrous alien flower. Its shape made no sense at all, but I could sense something behind and beyond it. Something becoming realer by the moment. I walked forward into the cascading energies, with Molly Metcalf on one side and Giles Deathstalker on the other, and the world fell away behind us.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  High Tension

  The new place hit me like a hammer, driving me to my knees. Just the weight of the world was so much more than I could stand. It was like being inside a ghoulville, only much more and far worse. The sky blazed with a fierce light, blindingly bright, as though the whole sky was a sun. The air was packed with a hundred scents, so rich and foul and intense that they fought to fill my head. Sounds everywhere, sharp and cutting, deep and disturbing, shuddering through my flesh and reverberating in my bones, as though someone was scraping their nails down my soul. I hugged myself tightly to keep from flying apart. I looked down to save myself from the incandescent sky, and the ground beneath me heaved and squirmed, covered with overcomplicated shapes that might have been vegetation or insects or something else entirely. There was so much detail my eyes watered, trying to cope with it all. Everything in this new world beat with life, as if even the ground and the stones were alive
and aware, everything pulsating with an appalling aggressive vitality. There was movement all around me, swift and sharp, as though nothing here ever rested, even for a moment.

  Welcome to the higher dimension. Welcome to the greater world. Welcome to the home of the Hungry Gods. It was all I could do not to puke.

  I felt as much as saw Molly fall to her knees beside me, shaking and shuddering from the shock of the transition. I grabbed blindly for her, and she grabbed me, and we clung tightly together for comfort. Overpowered by a reality and a world we were never equipped to deal with. In this higher dimension, everything was just too big, too real, too insanely complicated. We’d have been lost if it hadn’t been for Giles Deathstalker. Just as he’d said, his experience of surviving alien worlds gave him enough of an edge to help him cope. He crouched beside us, speaking calmly and soothingly, his voice coming clearly to us as the only sane and normal thing in this new existence.

  “It’s just another place,” he said. “The details change, but that’s all. You can cope. You can adapt. Because you’re human, and that’s what humans do. We roll with the punch, and we come back fighting. If you can’t cope with what you’re seeing, let your mind translate it into something you can cope with. You’re stronger than you think, Eddie, Molly. No matter how weird things get here, remember; it’s just another place.”

  His voice, his calm sanity, were a lifeline I could cling to, something I could use to ground myself. Slowly I built a shell of defiance around me, refusing to be beaten down by the sheer loudness of the place, and bit by bit I got control of my senses. Until finally I was able to get to my feet again, and Molly with me. We were both breathing hard, and still clinging to each other for mutual support, but we were back in the game. It might be a very small thing to be human, in this largest of worlds, but even the smallest insect can pack a deadly sting. A deplorable sting.

  “As long as the gateway remains open, and we stick close to it, we bring some of our world here with us,” said Molly. “Just like on the Damnation Way. It . . . insulates us, from the full force of the experience.”

  “Well thank the good God for that,” I said. “I really don’t think I could cope with the full-on experience. It’s like everything here has been cranked up to eleven.”

  “It is a bit of a strain,” said Giles. “And I’ve been around.”

  “We need to do what we came here to do, while we still can,” I said. “Molly, I think . . . Molly?”

  “Oh shit,” said Molly.

  I forced myself to raise my eyes from the ground and looked where she was looking. I heard Giles gasp as he saw them too. They were all around us. The Invaders, the Many-Angled Ones, the Hungry Gods. Huge and vast, living things big as mountains. They existed in more than just three physical dimensions at once, so my mind interpreted their appearance as a series of overlapping images, always subtly shifting, never quite the same twice. Their aspect strobed in my head, as much an impression as an image. There were circles of them, rank upon rank, impossible numbers, stretching as far away into the distance as I could bear to look. Waiting.

  They rose up into the sky, all of them moving slowly but inexorably forward. Towards the gateway, still pulsating and unfolding behind us. Looking up at them gave me vertigo, as though I might suddenly be plucked off my feet and sent hurtling up into the unbearable sky. I couldn’t tell what the living mountains were made of; only that it was vile and awful, like sentient cancers, with implications my mind didn’t dare consider. They had no obvious limbs, or sense organs, but I knew they knew we were there. Small as we were in comparison, they saw us, and knew us, and hated us.

  There was so much more to them than my limited human mind could cope with, more than I was capable of comprehending. I knew that. I made myself concentrate on what my eyes were showing me. They were vast and they were ancient and they were monsters. Their nature blazed forth from them, unhidden by any trace of self-deception. They knew what they were, what they had made of themselves, and they gloried in it. They were evil, evil as an almost pure concept, hating everything that wasn’t them. Because the only thing they wouldn’t or couldn’t feed on was each other. They ate life, and not just for sustenance, but for the sheer joy of destroying it. Antigods, concerned only with consuming creation.

  “How do we fight . . . that?” I said.

  “You don’t,” said Molly.

  I looked quickly around at her, disturbed at something in her voice, and saw something else looking back at me through Molly’s eyes. She looked . . . different, her whole face suffused with a new personality. She even held herself differently, as though new things were forming inside her, changing her shape and her balance. Giles swore softly beside me and reached for his sword. I gestured urgently for him to stop, and then gave the new Molly my full attention. I knew what had happened. The Loathly Ones were only ever extensions of the Hungry Gods, and this close to the real thing, the drone inside Molly had awakened and taken control.

  “That’s right,” said Molly. It didn’t sound like her at all. She smiled in a way Molly never would have, her gaze full of hate and spite. “I’m in the driving seat now. Molly’s having a little nap while I talk to you. I’ve done this before, you know, when I killed Subway Sue. Oh yes; that was me. So simple and easy, and no one even noticed. Didn’t it strike you as just a bit suspicious, her dying so suddenly? For no good reason? No? Well, you mustn’t blame yourself, Eddie. You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

  She stretched slowly, luxuriously, in a not entirely human way. “It’s good to be out in the open, instead of trapped inside such a small and limited thing, watching the world from behind her eyes and making my plans. I’m not strong enough to take over yet, to subsume her mind and soul in mine. I’m more . . . potential, than actual. But you should never have brought me here, Eddie. You never should have brought me home.”

  “How long have you been . . . switching her off, and taking over?” I said. My mouth was dry, but I fought to keep my voice steady.

  “Not long. It hasn’t been easy, corrupting Molly from within, protected as she is by her magics and the terms of the various unpleasant bargains she made in return for power. You wouldn’t believe some of the things she’s done, and some of the things she had to promise, so she could become the wild witch of the woods. I think you suspected me, didn’t you, Eddie, but you never asked because you didn’t want to know. Still, no need to worry about that now; I will become her, and she will be just another drone serving the Masters, for as long as she lasts.”

  “Why kill Subway Sue?” I said. “She was your friend.”

  “Not my friend, Eddie. Dear Sue had to go, because she might eventually have realised you could use the Damnation Way to access the higher realms. And we don’t like visitors here. We really don’t.”

  “Why kill Sebastian?” I said.

  “That wasn’t me, sweetie,” said the thing inside Molly. “Why would I kill one of us? Now, hand over the weapon. The box. The Deplorable End. Your quest is over, your mission a failure, your war at an end.”

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “Molly wouldn’t want me to.”

  A silver blade appeared in Molly’s hand, and she put the edge to her own throat. It was the arthame, its supernaturally sharp edge already cutting the skin so that blood coursed down her neck. Molly smiled, her eyes full of a vicious glee. “Do as you’re told, little human, or I’ll cut my throat. And after she’s dead, I’ll take the box from you anyway.”

  “You’re really ready to die?” said Giles.

  “I can’t die. I am part of a greater thing. You wouldn’t understand. I exist only to serve a function. Give me the box, Eddie, and you can have her back. For a while.”

  “She’d rather die,” I said, “than become you. She’d die happily, if it meant she could take you and your masters with her.” I slowly raised my right hand to show her the flat silver box with its red button. “If I press this button, this whole place goes away, forever. A second Big Bang, to end a unive
rse. No more here, no more you, no more Hungry Gods. Molly would see her death as a triumph, to bring that about.”

  “Are you sure?” said the thing, in a voice so like the real Molly it cut me to the heart.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she came here expecting to die. And I think perhaps I did too. We never really thought we’d find our way back again. And at least this way, we could go out together.”

  “And just when were you planning on telling me this?” said Giles.

  I looked at him. “You can still get away. Gateway’s still there, still open. You’ve done all that could be asked of you, held Molly and me together long enough so that we can do what’s necessary.”

  “No,” said Giles. “There’s a better way. Give me the Deplorable End.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” said Giles.

  “Excuse me,” said the drone inside Molly. “But I am still holding a very sharp knife to my throat.”

  “Take Molly back through the gateway,” said Giles. “I’ll do the business with the button, blow up the Hungry Gods, bring down the curtain. With them destroyed, the Loathly Ones should all perish too, including the one inside your Molly. You can both have a life together, Eddie. My gift to you.” He smiled briefly. “For showing me things I never would have believed possible. For taking me into your family. And because . . . I have never had, never known, what you and Molly have and know.”

  “I thought . . . you said something about woman trouble, back in your time?” I said.

  “Oh, there were always women,” said Giles Deathstalker. “Comes with the territory, when you’re Warrior Prime. But never anyone special. Never anyone who mattered. So take your Molly and go. I can do this. In fact, I have to do this. Someone has to shut the gateway from this side, to make sure the universe-destroying energies don’t blow back through the opening into your world. I’ve got some energy grenades that should do the trick; disrupt the energy matrix and collapse the hole.”