Guardians (Chosen Trilogy Book 2) (14 page)

In the first circle of
hell there was no hope. No freedom and no choice. No optimism. No faith. Not the faintest sense of an emotion beyond despair.

Ken
stuck with Felicia, sensing her misery deepen with every step. The courage it took for a free-loving, fast-running being to willingly enter this place was beyond him. It was selfless. Magnificent. Heroic.

Everything that he was not. He held no illusions. His life had been one long irresponsible free-for-all. To hold the lives and futures of so many people in his hands was beyond crazy, it was reckless, negligent. But to hold the future of the lovely, bubbly Felicia in his hands.

That was . . .
a
glorious nightmare,
he thought. A marvelous hell. It filled him with all the trepidation of failure and wanting and fear. It also made him need the future. Ache for it. He would help the beautiful Lycan run free once more or die trying.

Once
they’d crossed the lake and wandered an obscure path down to the first hell, they finally understood Lilith’s words. That
this
was the true hell. All the others were mere conquered worlds left to rot and decay.

There was no wailing down here, no corpses. It was a blasted landscape, full of jagged rocks and sharp escarpments. It was black
, slippery and decaying. It was crawling with malice, with unutterable evil, with unspeakable death. Lit though it was by a crimson fiery sky, that deep bloody hue served to cast only a deeper sense of malevolence across the hellish landscape. The little group couldn’t walk more than a few feet without having to duck behind the nearest set of rocks or dirty culvert. Once, when Ken got too close to a trickling snake of water the skin of his fingers began to burn, as if close to acid, and he almost screamed.

“Might be best not to drink the local produce,” he whispered. “Pretend it
’s Tunisia.”

“So long as the locals don’t get all touchy feely
,” Felicia said, “I’m with you.”

The terrain worsened with every mile. Lilith seemed able to navigate and, when Ken took the time to study the various rises and geographic features he
realized why. Every rock was different, every mountain and hill hewn and scarred as if hammered out with an axe. Eliza’s first request upon reaching the first circle was that Lilith show them the home of Dementia, so the young girl pointed toward a high hill with a shattered structure and a twisted tree in top.

“The house on the hill
,” she pointed, “is theirs.”

“And where
—” Ken paused, feeling a little foolish uttering the words despite the world around him. “Where does Lucifer live?”

“The Pit is that way.” Lilith nodded to the left of the hill house. “Do you see the faint glow on the horizon?”

Ken squinted. Beneath the ever-changing fiery sky he made out the weakest of distant glows, a dim hue of gold where the earth met the sky. “What is it?”

“The fires of the Pit. Sul
fur. Brimstone. That is the beating heart of hell.”

Ken felt a knot of fear the size of a Buick twist in his gut. “The only good thing about it is that we might not have to go there.”

They moved on. As they climbed and then descended and then climbed again across the rolling hills and jagged rock-piles, they began to see increasing signs of desperation. Many dead and dying corpses dotted the paths. Strange looking creatures, many of them terrifying, lay in hopeless agony, eyes flicking upward as the group walked by but unable or unwilling even to make a move toward them. Despair like nothing Ken had ever seen before existed here. Despair beyond imagining. Other demons shambled by, disfigured and deformed creatures that fell to their knees and begged the group for death. These were the wanderers of hell, bad beings that had committed unspeakable acts when alive. Ken imagined who they might be, or to which group of people they might belong. If indeed they were human. Hell, he imagined, wouldn’t be picky on whom it would accept.

Felicia struggled to cope among the deepening shadows of despair. “My hope is gone
,” she confided to Ken. “I see nothing to live for. To carry on for. Why am I here?”

Ken
hugged her hard. “To get back,” he said. “You carry on to get back. To our world. To Aegis. To York.” He pointed at the broken house that now lay just ahead. “Look. We made it. One more fight and we’re out of here.”

He helped her to the base of the hill. The
re the group paused, staring up the slight incline, seeing no movement, only desolation and decline. The isolation of the place attested to its utter creepiness.

Up they stalked, all the way to the top. The terrible twisted, bare tree provided a marker. As they neared the summit they bent closer to the ground, keeping their movements as small as possible.
Ken felt the rotting soil clump between his fingers, vowing not to let them touch his face and especially not his lips. The tree creaked as a breeze snapped up, its eerie branches leaning toward him like skeletal fingers.

Come, come,
they seemed to whisper.
We have pretty things to show you. A special treat. Come closer . . . so we can touch you.

Then Ken realized the tree
was
whispering these words into his brain. He knew it because Felicia was already walking forward, her arms outstretched. Ken grabbed her waist and pulled her away at the last moment, just as a whip-thin, knobby branch sliced past her with all the sharpness and thrust of a cutthroat razor wielded by a psychotic madman.

“Down!”
Lilith cried, head whipping around.

Eliza’s voice split the silence, a panicked warning.
“Heads up! She’s here!”

Ken whirled to find Dementia creeping up the hill at their backs, a fanged poisonous spider, bones dancing and clicking together around her neck.

“Myyyyy home,” she hissed. “You dare thisssss? You tesssssst meee? I will end you allllll.”

“We only want the artefacts
,” Ken tried, instantly drawing his sword. “Hand them over and we’ll go quietly.”

“The artefactsssssss?” Dementia’s mien twisted into an evil clown leer. “They mean everything to my Lorrrrd. His final hope. Without
their powerrrrrr, he can neverrrrrr return.”

Then she stopped, as if realizing she
’d said too much.

Ken nodded. The artefacts had just attained ultimate
ownership status.
Risk it all,
he thought.
Risk everything for them and scupper the Devil’s plan.

“Get the bitch.”

He swung hard, just missing her face, and grunted as his blade stuck into the earth. Dementia scuttled past him, gaining the hilltop and moving over to the tree. As she walked, the sharp ridged branches rose and draped themselves over her shoulders, creeping along like bumpy cockroaches. Once next to its spiny trunk she turned, a confident, smug smile making a rictus of her fang-filled face.

“Kill them with me, brotherrrrr
,” she said. “Gnaw on their fragile bonessss. Feast on their frail fleshhhh. It issss time.”

Rapatutu exploded from hiding. Wielding a black mace, he sprang from the ruins of the house, his sole intention to kill
, maim and rain down bloody mayhem. His first swipe narrowly missed cracking Milo’s skull. The huge vampire could only fall to the side, landing on one knee, as the great black spiked ball whistled past. If Milo had been hoping that the swing would unbalance the demon he was left wanting. Rapatutu immediately spun and came back harder still, aiming the mace once again at Milo’s bulk. The vampire rose fast and stepped in, now inside the mace’s swing range, and the ball whipped harmlessly by.

Milo and Rapatutu almost seemed to be
locked in a tight embrace.

Ken
pushed Lilith away and focused on Dementia. The brother-sister demonic duo had clearly either already offloaded the artefacts or had hidden them close by. Ken guessed the latter. These two would crave the Devil’s favor and would want to be at his side when Lucifer marched out of hell and onto Earth. They would wait until the last minute.

Ken struck at her, Felicia ranging out at his side. His
blade got caught on a bed of branches only an inch from Dementia’s tough hide, then those branches tried to tug it out of his grasp. Dementia wriggled, laughing like a loon. A branch shot forward, drawing blood from his cheek. Ken flinched hard. If that twig had aimed for his eye he’d be half blind now. He wrenched the sword free and moved, swinging the blade but never from the same point twice. The branches writhed and rose like a rolling Kevlar blanket, always protecting, always shielding.

Felicia stepp
ed to Dementia’s blind side as Eliza leaped to Milo’s aid. Ken saw the Lycan change her form in an astonishing few seconds, head and jaws elongating, arms and feet growing claws and flowing lupine muscle. And even then he still saw the beauty in her, the pliable elasticity of her outlook and nature, the effervescent character turned to natural, feral form. Doubling his efforts he fought to save her the trouble of a blitz attack. He didn’t want to risk her life, not now.

Before he could re-engage
, his ears picked up a loud caterwauling, the sound of many throaty voices baying for blood. Dementia snarled at him.

“That issss the ssssound of our
ssssoldiers. A hundred demonsss. A thousand. They come for you.”

Shit.
Ken jabbed at her. Dementia slipped clear of the tree, letting its branches deal with the onrushing Lycan. She twisted like a ballerina, testing Ken’s guard. He backed away, almost falling as those fangs and the rotting-breath smell of decayed flesh wafted over him. Dementia began to circle.

Milo
staggered as Rapatutu quickly wrapped the mace’s heavy chain around his throat and yanked hard. The barbed cable cut into his neck and held there, twisting tighter as Milo struggled. Rapatutu wrenched it hard, enjoying his victim’s agony.

But only for a second. Eliza came up on his right
-hand side, striking hard. In that instant Rapatutu played his crazy card, gripping the mace’s handles and twirling Milo around like an Olympian swings the hammer, and letting go at the top of the steepest slope.

Milo tumbled down fast, end over end, bowling over and over toward the bottom. Eliza’s immediate instinct was to leap after him, calling his name, and then she was slipping too, moving too fast in his wake, tripping and stumbling over earth that he’d already uprooted. The two vampires quickly became a cartwheeling mess, gaining speed as they neared the bottom.

Rapatutu glared triumphantly at Ken and Felicia, having unexpectedly evened the odds. Lilith backed even further away.

The gang of approaching demons, their voices an uninterrupted
high-pitched screech, saw the two vampires and surged toward them. Ken’s heart fell to see the oncoming throng, their vast numbers surely more than two vampires could handle.

Then
his vision filled with a more immediate problem: Dementia with her necklace of bones and horrific hair decorations. Powerful hands gripped his shoulders and that terrible mien stared down into his own.

“At lassssst. We meet again, Chosen One.”

Ken heaved her away, barely staying on his feet. To his left Rapatutu ran hard, distracting him, but then a gray streak smashed into the demon so hard it took it off its feet.

Felicia,
he thought.
The Lycan Missile.

The great wolf was bristling with fury. The huge head struck Rapatutu’s midriff, teeth already gnashing at his flesh even on first impact. The powerful shoulders followed, smashing with an unmatched muscular brawn. As the demon’s feet left the floor, the breath
—if he breathed at all—slammed out of him, his face softened by the sudden impact of crushing G-force, Felicia’s front claws came into play. Both came up and latched onto Rapatutu’s neck, digging in, piercing flesh, and gaining an unbreakable hold. Even as Rapatutu flew through the air, Felicia dug in further, trying to get her back legs up and into his soft midriff.

At last, after an interminable time airborne, the two hit the ground hard, Felicia on top. Rapatutu never recovered. Even as he landed, even as pain finally registered and caused him to scream, Felicia sliced her front claws in opposite directions, ripping out his throat. There was no sound, no sign of death throes, just the absence of movement.

The wolf’s head swung around, eyes falling on Dementia, hungry.

The
demon-bitch cried out. With surprising speed she pushed past Ken and hurled herself toward Felicia. The wolf sprang into the challenge.

Ken whirled again. Past the wolf and the demon, over the side of the hill,
the vampires were beset by a horde, an army. Demons streamed at them. Eliza and Milo stood their ground, back to back, solid rocks withstanding the battering flow. Demons fell at their feet, tripped over writhing bodies, their own knobbed, hard-baked flesh broken by hammer blows.

Eliza reached out and ripped fangs and teeth from one demon
’s mouth, using the sharp points to sever another’s neck. Her strength, her poise, was superb, matched only by the enormous Milo, the mountain at her back. He batted heads and bodies aside, swept up demons by the arms and legs and tore them apart. He smashed their brethren aside with severed limbs. Bodies piled up, the mass already higher than Eliza’s knees. The build-up of bodies presented more of a problem for the two vampires. Demons sprang and launched themselves off the wobbling pile, gaining momentum for their attack. They didn’t care that they were using the broken and dying bodies of their colleagues. Demons had no remorse.