Hellhound on My Trail (10 page)

The Hound howled at them above, as if to emphasize the point. Mike felt goose pimples on his arms and he couldn’t wait any longer.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, and jumped into the pool.

He wasn’t a very good swimmer, and as he thrashed his way to the bottom of the pool, grabbing handfuls of water and pushing them up, exhaling and trying to sink his own weight and wishing he were a little thinner, he wondered what he was doing. He didn’t know how deep the water was, he didn’t know what might be at the bottom, and he wasn’t really sure he wanted to be further pissing off the archangel Raphael, who was already probably irritated at the repeated tasering Mike had given him.

Plus, he couldn’t really be sure he was right about where the hoof was.

But he wanted to take a stand. He wanted to show his worth to the team, and he wanted to be part of something. He wasn’t afraid of the water, however bad a swimmer he was—it seemed to have healed his burns, and that made him feel that it wouldn’t drown him, either. Totally irrational, but that’s what he felt in his gut. Besides, maybe, whatever the band was planning to do with the hoof, it could also be used to help him with Chuy. It sounded like they were going to go bargain with the devil. Well, if the devil could make Adrian a real wizard and give Twitch a brain, or whatever it was she wanted, maybe he could set Chuy free, too.

And that might free Mike.

He hit the pool bottom and almost immediately found the hoof.

It was huge, as long as Mike’s forearm and curved like a scythe. For a moment he thought it must not be what he was looking for, but Adrian was shining down the light from above now, and Mike could see the bottom of the pool—it wasn’t very big, and there wasn’t anything else. Besides, the thing he’d found felt like a hoof, like a gigantic discarded nail clipping. He grabbed it in both hands.

Then he saw his pistol. No sense going unarmed, not in all this craziness.

Mike scooped up the gun, jammed it into his belt and kicked off for the surface.

He surfaced from the water, shaking himself like a dog. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a shattered heap of plastic and wire on the brick beside the pool. It was Adrian’s smartphone, he realized, stomped into fragments. Looking up, he found Adrian standing in the beam of the flashlight with his hands over his head.

“Who’s got the gun?” he asked, and then he saw Twitch behind Adrian, blood on her mouth like she’d been hit. Jim and Eddie stood behind the drummer, the singer still leaning heavily on his guitar player for support. “Oh,” he said.

“Slight miscalculation,” Twitch told him with a wry shrug.

“I got cocky,” Adrian grumbled. “Should have given the gun to the fairy.”

“Thank you, Mike,” Rafi said. He sounded polite and amused. “Go ahead and bring me the hoof.”

“Don’t do it!” Adrian snapped, but Rafi’s voice was warm and pleasant and anyway, Rafi was Mike’s friend. Mike dragged his soggy carcass out of the water. He belly-flopped onto the soft green grass like a beached whale, but his friends wouldn’t care, and besides, the sun was warm and the breeze was gentle. He smiled as he handed the gigantic toenail clipping over to his friend Rafael.

“Good job, Mike,” the boy grinned, and took the hoof.

“Hell,” Eddie said. Poor Eddie, he was always so grumpy, Mike thought. Even when the weather was perfect, like this.

“Not Hell,” Rafi said, “Eden. Now, Mike, would you please go get that ladder and set it up? There are some friends I’d like to join us.”

“Of course.” Mike found the ladder on the green sward and grunted as he tried to pick it up. “It’s kind of heavy.”

“Adrian,” Rafi suggested. “Would you mind helping?”

“Not at all.” Adrian and Mike together picked up the ladder and hoisted it up against the ceiling. Except there was no ceiling, there was only blue sky above. Mike’s brain skipped like a vinyl record with a scratch on that thought. There was blue sky above, but he had just placed a ladder up into an opening in the sky. Something didn’t quite click, and he felt his brain skipping again.

Far away, maybe in the forest over the hill, some big creature made its presence known with a shriek that thundered through the trees and sounded like it would uproot them all by sheer sonic power. It might be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Mike thought.

“Calling for your father won’t help,” Rafi said pleasantly. He was talking to Jim, who looked tired and haggard despite the pleasant surroundings, and leaned on Eddie for support. “Assuming you’d want to. But maybe you can play with his servants.” Mike heard the buzzing of flies, a small blight on the beauty of the day.

“Jim!” Eddie snapped.

“Phthonos!” Jim shouted, and suddenly the illusion of the garden and the forest and the sunshine and the distant sea snapped to shards like a stained glass window with a brick thrown through it. Jim’s voice echoed deep and strong—it
did
have reverb in it naturally, Mike would have sworn—and the inside of the super-kiva returned to view.

But who was Jim yelling at?

The Hound jammed its head through the opening at the top of the pyramid and howled. Jets of blue and red fire crackled from its rows of jagged teeth, lighting the interior like a carnival funhouse ride.

Was Jim calling the Hellhound?

“Jeez,” Mike muttered. He felt sick.

The archangel Raphael stood in the corner of the kiva, shotgun in his hands. The pyramid began to fill with Zvuvim and smaller flies, buzzing incessantly in a cloud of clacketing steel and black fly-demon flesh that descended out of the ceiling. The stink of rotting meat choked the air inside the chamber.

Inside the cloud, rattling down the ladder one heavy step at a time and shaking dust as it came, the Baal Zavuv descended into the kiva.

“Phthonos!” Jim shouted again, and something in the big man’s voice heartened Mike without any apparent intent to do so. “Attack!”

***

Chapter Ten

Mike charged.

He jerked the pistol from the back of his belt and drew a bead on the archangel Raphael, squeezing the trigger.

Click.

“Huevos!”
Mike cursed.

Boom!

He saw the muzzle flash of the shotgun and thought he’d bought the farm, but Rafi wasn’t shooting at him. Eddie and Jim tumbled to the ground together, and then Mike crashed on top of the archangel in the body of the little boy.

He raised his fist over his head and clubbed Rafi over the ear with the pistol’s grip.

“Ouch!” The kid staggered under the blow.

Mike saw in his mind’s eye what would happen next. The angel would blow him to bits with the shotgun, unless he managed to stop it. So he dropped his pistol and threw himself on the bigger gun, wrestling for control.

Buzzzzzz.

A knife sank into his back and then another, and Mike screamed in agony. He felt the legs of the Zavuv on his back and legs and smelled the dry-dust stink of the fly-demon, but he couldn’t let it stop him. He grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and threw his weight against it, trying to fall and rip it bodily from the angel’s hands.

Boom!

The gun went off, and Mike wasn’t dead.

“Get off!”

Rafi backhanded Mike across the face and hurled him across the room—

Buzzzzz!
a second Zavuv intercepted Mike in midair, sinking its mandibles into his chest—

Mike screamed again—

“Per Volcanum—”
Adrian shouted, and then Rafi clubbed him in the face with the shotgun and he fell like a sack of grain—

Mike landed in the cistern of holy water.

The Zvuvim on his body exploded into flame and he sank, fire burning him before and behind, and at the same time feeling the delicious ice-cool soothing touch of the waters. This was some kind of insanity, Mike thought. Feeling two opposite things at the same time, like loving and hating someone.

Though as he thought of it, he realized that’s how he felt about Chuy.

Which, of course, might be madness.

At the bottom of the pool, the smoldering flies fell away from him and he bounced back toward the surface. Mike emerged from the water feeling refreshed and whole.

ROAR—CRACK!

The Hellhound smashed its shoulders against the entrance in the ceiling, knocking loose bricks and dust that fell and peppered the water around Mike. Eddie and Adrian both lay prone and still, and Jim fought the Baal Zavuv.

Jim was a wild man, like a monkey or a comic book character. As Mike stared, Jim ran up the corner of the room like it was a flat surface, dodging a swipe of the Baal’s enormous claw. From over the Baal’s head, Jim kicked off and flipped backwards through the air, landing with both heels on the Baal’s shoulders. The Baal raged and swiped, but Jim dodged, moving from one foot to the other with casual grace, batting and slashing aside dive-bombing Zvuvim all the while.

His balance and speed were inhuman, Mike thought.

Because, of course, Jim
wasn’t
human. Jim was the son of Satan.

Twitch dashed around the Baal, landing blows on it as she could with her wooden batons, but mostly smashing Zvuvim to the ground, keeping them off Eddie’s and Adrian’s bodies.

The archangel Raphael stood back in the corner of the room, holding the shotgun and the hoof of the rebel Azazel and laughing his head off.

“Phthonos!” Jim yelled again.

The Hound answered him with a long, loud hollering cry that was almost mournful.

Mike shook himself. He needed to act.

Adrian was closer. Mike crept forward, hoping that the spectacle would distract Rafael until he could grab the organ player’s leg. Fortunately, Adrian was a small man. Mike wrapped his fingers around the wizard’s ankle and pulled, dragging the little man into the pool.

As they both splashed into the water, Adrian started thrashing around. Mike grabbed the wizard by the collar of his jacket and pushed off the floor, bringing them both up to good breathable air again—

and staring into the open mouth of the shotgun.

“You’ve been a lot of trouble, Mike,” the archangel Raphael snarled through the mouth of the little kid. “Time to say good-bye.”

He pumped the shotgun, pointed it at Mike’s head and squeezed the trigger—

Boom!—

Mike threw himself back into the water—

he felt the shotgun slug tear into his chest and felt the flesh healing up behind the projectile immediately, his whole body tingling like electricity.

Boom!
He heard another shot while he was underwater, muffled, and felt another slug hit him in the hip. He felt the bone break, and felt it knit again, almost instantly.

Mike came up again spluttering, ecstatic and totally disoriented. Jim and Twitch fought the Baal and its Zvuvim in the background, the flies swarming around them like a curtain, opaque and buzzing.

“Damn you!” Raphael shouted. “Get out of the water!”

“No!” the shout came from Eddie, who had struggled to his feet. Blood ran down his chest from a hole in his shirt and he looked worn and broken, but he broke into a charge.
“You
get
in!”

Eddie rammed the kid with his shoulder and wrapped both arms around him, launching both of them into the air—

out over the pool—

and
splash!
into the water.

Rafi hit the water and lit up like an incandescent bulb. Light seemed to burn inside him and rocketed from the entire surface of his body as he and Eddie sank. He looked like a living X-ray image—Mike thought he could see bones glowing through his skin, flailing and trembling as he sank. Mike grabbed for Eddie and was nearly blinded by the glow of the kid beside him. He managed to dig his fingers into the guitar player’s army jacket and drag the man up, out of the water.

The light streamed up, out of Rafi’s body like a bolt of lightning in reverse, a column that shot straight for heaven, through the open top of the pyramid and into the stone overhang above it, and then was gone.

Rafi thrashed as the light left him, then went limp. Adrian grabbed the boy, hauling him up, and Eddie—looking much healthier and moving better—got himself upright. Eddie ducked under the water again and grabbed his shotgun; Mike picked up the crescent of hoof-clipping, floating on the surface, and the three of them moved toward the edge of the pool and the cloud of Zvuvim surrounding Jim and Twitch.

Eddie rested his elbow on the edge of the pool. He pumped the shotgun, aimed into the cloud and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

“I guess it’s knives, boys,” Eddie muttered darkly. “Unless one of you has that escape plan Raphael was blabbering about.” He started dragging himself out of the water.

With a lightning-like backhand, the Baal finally landed a blow on Twitch, punching her with its enormous knuckles in her chest. Twitch hit the wall and sank to the floor in a spray of bright blood. Zvuvim swarmed her.

Mike and Adrian dragged themselves out on Eddie’s heels. Adrian was already muttering something. Mike dug into his pocket for a weapon and came up with nothing but a pocketknife.

“Phthonos!” Jim yelled again, his huge voice barely audible under the carpet of swarming Zvuvim. Mike thought he saw the singer, sword in one hand and a pinned Zavuv in the other, parrying attacking fly-demons with the body of their comrade and stabbing at the face of the Baal Zavuv. He looked bloody and tired.

ROAAAR—CRASH!!

With a final lunge, the Hellhound broke through the ceiling. It fell in a shower of bricks and flame straight toward the pool, and Mike scrambled to get out of its way. Adrian didn’t move—he struggled to incant something, heaving his chest and shaking his head like he was fighting to stay awake.

Krakkkksh!

The Hellhound landed on the edge of the cistern, its front paws and head out of the water, and its hind legs and tail landing in. It missed Adrian by scant feet, and the wizard stumbled sideways from the shock. Steam gusted up from where the water doused the Hound’s flames on contact.

The Hound shrieked and snarled in furious pain.

Grrrraaaaaraaargh!
the Baal bellowed in answer.

Jim leaned against the wall. He’d been hit by something, and didn’t seem to be able to stand on his own anymore. The Baal towered over him, claws lashing like bandsaws and tusks gnashing at the air.

“Per Isidem—”
Adrian collapsed to the floor.

Mike snapped open the puny blade and followed Eddie, charging at the pile of Zvuvim crawling over Twitch. It’s over, he thought. This is where I die.

I hope Chuy’s not waiting for me on the other side.

He stabbed his little knife into the nearest fly-demon, waiting for his own destruction.

The Hellhound lunged forward, roaring—

and clamped its enormous crocodilian jaws around the waist of the Baal Zavuv.

The Baal howled in fury and surprise. The Hound lifted it off the ground and shook it. Zvuvim buzzed around the two larger demons, whining in to slash with their mandibles at the Hellhound and bursting into flame on contact.

Zvuvim stampeded away from Twitch, nearly knocking Mike over as they buffeted into and past him. The drummer was left in a heap on the floor.

“Twitch,” Eddie and Mike said together.

She raised a hand weakly and grinned. “Not dead yet.”

“Let’s get you into the pool,” Mike suggested, and stooped to pick her up.

Twitch slapped away his hands, suddenly animated. “Whoa, Mike, not me! I’ve seen what happens to immortals who get into that water!”

“Immortals?” Mike scratched his head. “Uh, of course.” There was no
of course
about it, though. He had a lot to learn, and he knew it.

Mike turned back to the battle that raged between the two demons. The Hound rushed at the wall of the chamber—

the Baal sank its claws into the Hellhound’s shoulder—

“Attack, Phthonos!” Jim yelled—

and the Hound slammed the Baal into the wall, head-first.

CRACK!

Grwaaaaargh!

Blue sparks crackled at the point of impact. Zvuvim swarmed the Hound with angry, frenetic buzzing, which was almost enough to make Mike feel sorry for the beast. When they struck its front half, which still flamed, they burnt and died, but when they attacked its hindquarters they drew blood. The Hound swung about, obviously in pain, managing to stomp on a few of the flies or catch them with its flaming forepaws.

Meanwhile, the Baal Zavuv clawed at the Hound’s head. The Baal’s flesh smoked and scorched and stank, and with an enraged bellow it tore off one of the Hound’s ears.

“Attack!” Jim yelled again.

The Hound charged at the wall again, swinging its head to slam the Baal’s skull against the brick. One of the Baal’s eyes shattered on impact, spraying thick ichor on the wall and floor in another shower of fizzing blue sparks. The Baal shrieked and sank all its talons into the head and neck of the Hellhound.

Mike noticed the gray pallor of pre-dawn early morning creeping in through the opening at the top of the pyramid. He almost chuckled.

“Attack!”

The Zvuvim swarmed the Hound so thickly Mike couldn’t even see its flames anymore, and the inside of the super-kiva was shrouded in thick shadow. The Hellhound charged the wall and smashed the Baal into it a final time—

CRACK!

The wall collapsed.

Brick dust, bricks, and ancient timbers hidden inside the walls exploded in a spray of masonry chaos and waves of blue fire over the struggling demons. Mike staggered back, pulling Twitch with him away from the wall, which continued to tumble, one brick at a time, each brick exploding in blue sparks as it hit the floor. Finally Mike found the corner, coughing and spitting dust on the floor and wiping muddy grit from his eyes.

And then there was silence.

“Twitch?” Mike called. “Eddie?”

He was rewarded with an answering cough. “I’m here,” he heard. It was Eddie’s voice. “I’ve got Adrian. He’s alive.”

“I’m alive, too,” Mike heard Twitch say from somewhere very close, and then realized he was clutching her to himself like a scared kid would hold a rag doll. And she felt like a man.

“Uh, sorry,” Mike said, feeling awkward.

“Sorry you saved me?” Twitch asked.

“No,” Mike answered immediately. He stood, and helped Twitch stand, too. “Sorry, I … uh, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Sorry.”

Twitch laughed. “Welcome to the band,” the drummer said, and kissed him on the cheek.

Mike chose to think of Twitch as a woman, and to enjoy the kiss.

Splash!

The dust was settling enough that Mike could see Eddie dragging Adrian into the pool. When the wizard hit the water he woke up, spitting and cursing.

Then he found Rafi. The boy lay under a fur of brick dust, breathing deeply like he was sound asleep.

“What about Jim?” Mike asked. He approached the pile of rubble, finding himself standing in the weak light of morning among the bodies of what seemed like a hundred giant flies. He could see the tail and back legs of the Hellhound sticking out from under the bricks. There were no flames, and he wondered if the creature was dead.

And then the tail swished.

“Help!” Mike snapped, and jumped back.

But then Jim was there, patting the big creature on its rump and talking to it. “Easy, Phthonos,” Jim said in his strange, booming voice. “Easy. Friends.”

The Hound shook its big flaming crocodile head free of the rubble, dropping the torn and broken body of the Baal Zavuv into the dust. The front half of its body still burned, and as Mike watched, smoke began to rise from its hindquarters as well.

“You’re talking,” Mike said.

“Wards of silence,” Jim grinned. He was dusty and bloody and his t-shirt was destroyed, but he looked totally unconquerable. Then his grin fell off and he yelled to Adrian. “Please tell me there really are wards of silence in here, and they’re still intact.”

Adrian rinsed off his lens in the cistern’s water and squinted through it at the chamber around him. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s all still there. But it’s starting to fall apart, so you’d better shut up and we’d better get moving. A stitch in time, you know.”